2018

Down this long wooden stair,
slick snow piles on step and railing.
On every side tree trunks people the ravine
down toward the frozen lake.

My muffled hand slides
clumps of snow away
with every bend of knee;
padded fingers grasp
wet boards as I step,
carefully down the side
of stillness.

Attachment to life
curls, decided as my grip,
spirit agreeing (for once) with fingers--
not fear so much as looking forward,
as wanting to go on---
affirmation over and over
before a thousand living
witnesses.

I turn at the bottom,
look back at wooded slopes
I have descended,
feel like flinging out my arms,
like screaming one great cheer
of exultation.

Kankakee River State Park

There is something miraculous about spring. Simply being alive within this season is a gift.

The Last Spring

 

Over fields flat and broad
as emptied rooms,
a sunburst cracks
this morning's horizon.

Dad's red tulips,
beneath the feeder,
almost bloom.

Grape hyacinths hoist
clusters of fairy-egg blue.

The forsythia blossoms
tatters of sunshine.

The sky has fallen
and is coming back up
in flowers.

The Light In My Kitchen

The light in my kitchen
comes
whether I deserve it
or not.
In the morning
it lifts
through the eastern frame
of my bay window,
ebbs out
night's mystery
with
a pastel wash,
and crests
white fire
above Providence Bank
(prosaic, but true.)

In these winter afternoons
(so early)
it falls yellow
along
the door and the curtains
and
the honey-colored boards
which need to be swept,
and drops
in a triangle
of orange glory
between
the tall garages and
the trees.

Winter Traveling

As youngsters, you and I
were archaeologists,
explorers, discoverers
of treasures in guise
of corn husks, shale,
an old piece of toy.
My brave big sister,
you have been
to Mexico, Nepal,
Uganda, even
dense places
of your own heart,
and you are still seeking
and finding and seeking.
I see you off,
this sleety afternoon,
with what I have
as precaution against
calamities of the storm:
empty coffee tin, matches
and the stub ends
of Advent candles.
If push comes to shove,
one flame makes
a lot of warmth
and light and melts
the snow to water.

Leanings

Plants have their ways
of leaning toward the light.
A pot at window's edge
needs turning lest
its tenant grow lopsided.
White-green weeds
in dirty basements vine
toward sun-short panes
spaced just above the ground,
and every dark-damp seed
still shears itself toward shine.

Healing Conversations

I find him heartening,
that fellow who, half-healed,
likened men to leggèd trees.
There are lots of us blurry folk,
divine spit on our lids,
telling God what we see.

Hallelujah

I love this recording by friends Arija and Laura

https://soundcloud.com/arija-1/hallelujah

Reply to a Poet

[My friend and fellow poet, Thomas D, wrote a poem "Tenth Letter to a Poet"  which touched me, and inspired the following reply.]


Your sunburst description
brings me at once
to bulletin inserts
in a little country church.
How the skies were torn
over fields of corn and soybeans,
over pastures and orb-eyed cows,
over dips of timber . . .
over land given, long ago,
in a dead daughter's name--
Estella, who wanted to be a missionary.

Ours was just one more tale
of frailty and faithfulness
as we left those white walls
and led the somber line
behind my father's hearse.
The gray October sky
cried light through thin places
of cloud. My mother took it
as a sign of God's presence.

Today, the children and I
read Jonah's story--
how God finds us,
how even a runaway and fish
may prefigure resurrection.
I am glad of your reminder
that God can find us even in
our weakest words.

Vessel

I drink often from my sister's mug,
the seasonal one I formerly objected to,
strenuously, on account of its chipped lip:
It lets out toxins. It harbors germs.

But somehow watching the incense of Lady Grey,
or chai, or some generic black tea curl
from a cup with "Peace" in red cursive
across its middle (and, more palely,
like steam wisps, "love, joy, hope")
is something akin to cookies for Santa--
a rite proclaiming I still believe.

Confession

Before clipping,
white tips measure,
bluntly, the time since
fingers last touched strings.
Each bright click marks
a sin of omission confessed,
a repentance.

I lift my violin -- tiger nut
from black hull-case --
and feel, between shoulder
and neck, the forgotten vibrations
of life renewed.

30

The word is "marvelous"
though I hesitate to claim
so extravagant a modifier.
Is there any better word
for the father's party when
his prodigal came home?

We talked of  "every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places."
"Imagine," the speaker said,
"a dragon load of treasure."
But I will see
goldenrod and purple
asters, Queen Anne's lace gone
to bird nest cups, blood red
leaves, and silver sunrise climbing
to a radiance.

"Heavenly places" sounds
intangible as the blue so
far above arm's length--
yet I have been surprised
by joy as stout and bold
as goldenrod blossoms,
love durable and free
as split milkweed shells.
There are things more real,
even, than fear. I find this
marvelous.

Solace

(composed in 2012, posted again with minor revisions)

Solace

I sit cross legged here beneath Your eyes--
alone at home, my uniform exchanged
for PJ's--laying off my role's disguise,
my threadbare clutching after some deranged

significance. "See! This and this are me,"
I need not say to You. I am immersed,
x-rayed, and sanctuaried--all You see--
Your vision, my release. Though I am versed

in self-examination, scrutiny
of sample slivers flayed for microscopes,
Your searching leads to healing unity.
Your looking is my quiet and my hope.

In all my contradictions, still Your own--
loved unreservedly, completely known.

Let Spring In

Let spring in--
let the tender ivies twine round your bones.
Let the bluebells hang between your ribs,
let their bright blue music sing
into your very marrow.
Let redbuds grace the bole of your torso,
the branches of your arms,
the twigs of your fingertips.
Let lilies of the valley wreath your heart,
each long dark leaf sheltering
a tiny white line of blossom.
Let violets nestle everywhere
and a few brash dandelions.
Receive this budding, this bursting, this leafing out--trusting
"His mercy is over all that He has made."

March 20

Snow floats like swan down
on this first morning's spring
following the indomitable winter
whose grip sunk, day after day,
deeper through earth until
the buried pipes burst.

Riding the gentlest wind
(blessedly mild and tuned
to robin song and cardinals'
new sprung voice), when faced,
the flakes appear as soft gray clumps
spilling from soft gray clouds.
They make me squint
with their multitude of wet caresses.

Inside, shedding my coat, I glimpse
a quick vision of silver drops in golden hair
and smiling, wind-red cheeks.
At times, we're privileged to touch
wonder woven through the world--
to hear little rivers running
through our very selves.

Matthew 7:7

Think back to that time
when you held out
your beating heart
in your two cupped hands,
your little girl/little boy eyes
bright with hope or tears,
and said, "I need"--
that time when you found
your heart was better
kept behind the bars
of your ribs, the shield
of your breast bone--
that time when you learned,
or the next time, or the next,
when you reviewed the lesson,
when you concluded
the answer was to take . . .
or maybe just to give.
Remember that?
But now there's this Man
with the scarred hands
who bends, smiling, to whisper,
"Ask."

"The Thing With Feathers"

My sister and I
raised a sparrow once
from nakedness to flight
by poking food down
its orange gullet every time
it opened its yellow clown mouth
and hollered.

My hope, Miss Emily,
is more of that variety.

Yes

Yes is a very scary word . . .
coming, as it does, whispering
into a world wrapped round
with a thousand screaming 
noes.
You have to strain
to hear it, sometimes,
and the noes get louder,
too: no, no, no.
You can't just cover up your ears
and hope to hear
yes.

2014

The snow falls through the city's bright midnight.
And now, seconds after the new year's birth,
a few rogue firecrackers play between rooftops
and naked branches. Dancing with snowflakes,
the sparks seem all the more magic--
this mingling of fire and ice glimpsed
through slats of a broken window shade.
A wish, a prayer behind my dirty window:
This year, Lord, let me learn to connect.

In preparation for guests,
my morning brings a grocery run.
Alas, the first store is (understandably) closed.
A fellow hopeful and I commiserate,
sloshing back to our cars.
"Happy New Year!" He smiles at me--
then, suddenly earnest, says,
"I'm glad to be here."
At the second store I find success and feel,
oddly, beneath the dripping awning, a pleasant thrill.
This could be a wonderful year.
It is all right to hope. Sometimes
hope, like love, must be allowed.

Staying

It skims over the playground sky
like a short, blunt pencil--no, pen,
a shiny, blunt pen, red as excitement,
as adventure: "Look!" I urge the children.
We see another, higher, spinning a contrail
like a silver thread through the highest sky.

My brother rode one (well, two or three)
through the air, all the way to Rome.
I, myself, have been to Arizona.
Sometimes I wish I could leave it all,
laughing, and step from one world
to the next, riding in the belly of a blunt
pen winging through thin air, far above
the wrinkles of cloud hiding the children
as they laugh and chase and climb
to the top of the monkey bars,
looking, from below, like they
could touch the sky.

Love is the web that wings us down,
the seed at the end of the fluff,
the ropes to the stakes.
It is the hug and the time-out chair,
not to mention "I'm sorry" and
"Let's try again." Did you know
Love made gravity?
Today, they will not wonder
where I have gone.