Two good things I did today: three! Three! Three!
I saw a hundred dragonflies and they saw me.
I stopped a long time looking at a hawk up in the sky:
it floated, soared, and sailed up there,
and made me want to fly.
And then because I saw the world was beautiful and bright
I picked up trash beside the road because it just seemed right.

There must there must be more than the dust
and sweat and blood and tears and toil
before we comet to the soil;
be more than fears when end our years,
more than brief moment cut away
a taste of life, then down we lay.
(And still I sit, and let clock tick
escape by movie, book and game.
Evade, avoid: real thought brings pain.)
Sometimes I see outside of me
to others' wrestling mortal coil,
know we will all commit to soil.
There must be rust and death unjust
but we have us and love and care
and death can't take the love we share.

I'm a pendulum; I hang on your every word.
But when you are silent I'm captive, unstirred.
And when you are distant or hard to hear,
I huddle all heavy and still for fear.
Hoping for message by sight or sound
I vacillate: hang on or just hang around.
And if I let go my hold will I fall?
Or is there a holder above it all?

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.