Elizabeth Waiting

The house has long been too quiet.
Your shoulders round with it.
The skin of your neck sags
with folds of many silences.
Like it or not, you've learned to bear
that relentless hollow,
the one you curve your body over
each time you bend
your knees and neck in prayer.

But now the silence thrums
with gathering life--the stringing of sinew,
bone and bone, tiny building-up,
tiny knitting of prophet child within you.
As Zachariah minds his own silence,
your lips open and shout!
You sense it--the world swells
for joy.

Advent, First Sunday

Something . . .
The bright sky spanning
muted earth--all rusts and tans?
The ice-veiled pond,
each wrinkle hushed
in opaque contemplation?
The soft red cows,
so utterly animal? Perhaps even
the patter of our people talk--
the short sentence, spider-silk-fine
ties that bind together?
Something
whispers a cataclysm
of immanence and transcendence,
sky descending--a single
great blue wing--to blow
away like dust
or gather in, gather in
and tuck, tender, to
one immense and thundering heart.

After Advent

The tree tinsel is whispering
in sparks of gold-white, rose-red, blue-orange
fire blown of silver breath.

A startled mourning dove whips free of sleep,
a scream of air under feathers, soft--
soft as snow thunders beneath our boots.

The world spreads its white desert presence
toward outer space. Bare trees flex wizened fingers--
ready to clap, to roar, to rejoice!

And we are waiting yet.
We all are waiting.
Already. But not yet.