God loves past logic and past deserving

with a love that's constant, pure, unswerving.

God sees us truly and suffers fools gladly,

full of mercy when we go badly.

God loves us like a mother a child:

I looked for judgment and God just smiled,

and called me back through dark and cloud.

God loves past silence, but not always out loud.

A bit of fluff.

Oh I have tried Cinderella's shoe,

the pretty thing, and it fit me, too,

but the thought of wearing it all my life,

of gowns, and being the prince's wife,

awoke in me a wild sweet dream

of throwing off appear and seem

and being real, being only me

and running or resting where I want to be.

So I dance alone or with whom I choose

and don't have to worry abut breakable shoes

and wear old jeans and don't comb my hair

and I see the palace, but I don't go there.

New rhubarb leaf

I am not only thankful that I can kneel to soil,
put in my hand to abundant land;
seed planted water poured abundantly will bring reward
in flower, fruit, pod and root.
Put in my sweat and greatly get.
Soft muscle ache, good sleep, good wake.
Put in my worries over frost, plants lost to beetles, worms and moths.
Put in the time that others choose to spend on city street and lose
the feel of sun and soil and wind and hope shaped like the seeds put in.
I am not only thankful that I still can walk, and plant and till,
for it is known that day will come when I cannot, and must sit still.
I am not only thankful for these garden blessings on my knees.
But also for the joy I feel when in this holy ground I kneel.

I cannot deal with death, though death will surely deal with me.
The power greater is that washes all away to sea,
than my poor frantic scrabblings of oh god it cannot be,
my shallow and pathetic strokes against the enemy.
And now the years have passed I see the anguish will remain,
the stabbing grief is still as deep as that first shaft of pain
the day death came. And it is plain
time has no balm, and is not sorrow's bane.
Even so. We are alive to live.
We have been made for life, to give
and take within the living world, and if
my reason bids me false, I will lie quiet in my grave:
Death, thou art wrongful!
I charge thee death, with all my will,
thy eventual destruction is writ down and cannot fail,
and life will prevail.

Easter morning
I sit on my temporary porch
facing east Easter morning.
Some day we may build a deck,
but today it is these four steps.
There the old old swing
generations have joyed,
here a quick coffee in a favourite mug,
there sunshine on old hopeless snow banks.
We will be thirty or more
in our old house today,
and I'm stealing a moment
because I did not have time for church:
and here is the sun
the cool spring breeze
the leaf-waiting trees
and a choir of geese, sparrow, magpie, crow,
and a solo by mourning dove.
  *********************

Frozen puddle

Good Friday
Two timeless days dead
and the world changes.
The death you feared came near.
Troubled, overwhelmed, forsaken, you died.

If I do not hear from God
I will just keep listening
and try to be

kind.

 I don't need to see a burning bush,
and couldn't take it if I did.
But as I walked into the woods,
I saw a glow,
a hidden shine,
and past the poplars, maples, oaks,
I came upon a brilliant sign.
A dried grass vision, small but mine.

My writing is going through a dry spell, but I was fortunate to see and photograph the lunar eclipse going on just over our house in southeast Manitoba last night. It was a cold one at 2:00 a.m., -13C or so. Mars is visible above and to the right of the moon in the first photo. I believe the star below and to the right is Spica.
This was beautiful and amazing to behold.

Acorn shell in oak bark lichen

 

Hundred year old woman
Acres and bushels and fathoms of words,
furlongs of words have I,
and all of them painful but all of them true,
and all from a world gone by.
Who knows, when all of my loved ones are gone
and all of my enemies dead,
who remembers the world as it used to be
back when I am what I said.

When I doubt the love of God I still know it deep inside me. Will old age or infirmity take that from me? If it does, takes my knowledge or my mind, I will still be a beloved though I may not know it any more. (Although I have heard it said, do not go gentle into that deep fishbowl.)

BECOMING THE GOLDFISH
Consider the goldfish, supreme in her element.
She swims so lovely, moving dance,
glide and flash, swirling by.
Knows not all of earth and sky,
but grounded in the waters.
I see the approach of full immersion.
I see I forget what I used to know.
Long have I searched for the heart of God,
have held it and felt it inside of mine,
but a few scales now glisten on my long-smooth mind.
And sometimes a floating, and sometimes a shimmer
of my changing skin as the years polish me.
Oh, let me slip lightly around my fishbowl,
Shining and simple
Serenity.

 

A silent dawn; I could not sleep

so watched the light grow on the trees

The sky was pale; the trees were still

all watching pale light sky to fill

All waiting there and motionless

Did they know something I just guess?

The trees stood tall and did not stir

nor ask where absent colours were

But waited as they always do

until they gold against the blue.

And I sit by my fireplace

and wait for someday sun on face