Three Thoughts One Day

My prison is in a city of the living.

I was sentenced to life.

Everyone else is on the outside.

People I know go on and live lives,

have children who thrive,

and marry and achieve.

Even my family come home with their love

and I step outside my secret cell,

to greet like a free woman and smile.

When they return to their homes,

my house returns to silence;

I step back behind bars.

There.

I hugged everybody I could.

And I hugged 'em good.

A mother can do that; a mother should.

My mother died when I was a child

so I didn't learn hugging from her.

And didn't know hugs were something I wanted

to give, so I used to demur.

Now older and wiser I don't hold back

from hugging if I feel the call.

My grandmotherly wish extends to the world,

and I say, "God hug us all."

******

I awoke one morning in Christmas week with such a yearning to be alone with God, my God, my protector and cherisher and sanctuary. Away from my life, alone with just God and silence. To be held, and to hold to, the First Cause and Final Rest which is surely (though I am not always sure) Love.

Was it just another escapist symptom of grief and depression? Maybe. But still, it gifted me with hope. Maybe some day or some how this union or reconciliation with the Loving Father, or the Great Mother, will be realized. Don't we all have the primal urge or instinct for protection of ourselves, for security in some final and lasting sense? Or even better, the ultimate dream, where not only do we escape our failures and losses, but they are actually resolved and restored? What a thought, and so full of hope that my failing self can hardly hold on to it. An occasional fleeting grasp is all I can expect.

Waiting For Advent

Speak gently to my wounded broken heart;

On my crushed spirit lay your healing balm.

There is in me a wailing wind of storm

That only gentle hands divine can calm.

This constant pain, this weariness always,

Need something more than this world can provide.

I yearn for rest, for peace from troubled thoughts,

Some sanctuary for my soul to hide.

Or as I walk along my life's set road,

Some sign at least that there will be a time

When pain will end, when wrongs will be made right,

Though this life be a constant labouring climb.

Speak gently, say you will gather all our tears

And heal and heal life's broken weeping years.

Solidarity in the Dying Days

The Samaritan, when he kneeled in assistance to the wounded and suffering victim of a violent assault, could reasonably have had a moment (or more) of thought: by stopping to help, he might be in danger from the attacker, the enemy. By compassionately showing concern for the victim, he was in effect placing himself in an oppositional position to the attacker. He was taking sides. And when we take sides we take a risk that the side we oppose may strike us. There may be a cost.

By helping those in need, we oppose suffering. By standing by those who are dying, we oppose death.

I cannot win

But I will not sit back down.

Thoughts on the last days of a good man and close friend whose life ended in suffering because of a degenerative disease

As I stepped on the downward stair

I reached for a railing that wasn't there.

Precarious, precarious!

But that was not the scariest.

As I got to the bottom floor

I opened what was not a door

into a space of dark and gloom

that wasn't anything like a room.

Disorient, disorient!

I wonder where my prayers went.

It's dark and silent, this I know;

but silent dark may be friend or foe.

 

 

I regretted I regretted

But that did not change my featherness.

If I'm blowed and blown away

I may end up in such as this.

The breath I'm on has brought me here

To lose perhaps what I hold dear.

No turning back from doom or glory;

mine only to live out the story.

Gone my faith. I'm left with trust

until I give back spirit and dust.

If I could love more than could God

I would myself become a god.

No goddess I, I know that's true.

I trust to someday meet with You.

 

 Death is a clap.

Are there echoes?

I have heard in the night

how the sound goes

into the dark unknown

fading but on it goes

into the blur unseen

as if it has always been

as if I will meet it again

and know it an old good friend.

 

I don't want to join the world

I want to keep apart

So I stay under my blanket listening to my beating heart

Wishing I could sleep

Until the day ends

But my brain starts to think so I get up in self defence

There's no hiding from

And there is no escape

Whatever will get dished out that is what you have to take

So I will face the day

That is confronting me

Because it is, and I am, though I don't know how to be

 

 

Highbush Cranberry in the woods

I ate a berry that no hand had touched.

No one had planted here this shrub to grow,

None watered; and its place no one could know

But I myself. (So red, so tasting much.)

The only harvest needed was, reach up,

Bring near the branch as though unto a kiss

(What sweeter lips can there be than this)

And strip from stem to mouth the holy cup

Then with the trees come willingly, partake,

In company of leaves and birds, who also fly

As my soul will and does unto the sky,

Of this most holy time. Your spirit wake

To see the world your sister, brother, friend,

Whose heart you break and help again to mend.

I like the sky when dark with glowering cloud
For how it makes the autumn trees shine loud.
Perhaps some inner glow through veins bestowed
By days of summer sun in-poured, restored;
Perhaps the wisdom of the trees turned gold,
Distilled the patience, the wealth of age untold;
Perhaps some artist wandered here along
These fields I love and painted visual song,
Bold strokes of blaze and glow and flashing note,
A many-chorded harmony from nature's throat.

I hold the leaf up which upholds the light
Though dark surrounds, and bless me, oh this sight.
However came this magic alchemy,
In sun or cloud, may something shine through me.





And another...
 
If leaves have souls
when they die
how many bright and fragile spirits fly
in autumn when the cold hard breeze
takes the living off the trees
The air must surely fill with wraith-
like filmy figures dancing high
on their way in sweet release
to come to grow on other,
bright eternal tree.

 

I love
therefore God is

Faith may falter
Hope may die
But love remains
under every sky
Love will linger
Love will stay
And when the earth
has passed away
the cooling stars
will sigh and say
Love outlasts
Love is the infinite and only way

I dreamt I was walking beneath the bridge, upside down on the underside.
It arched high over the city scape, with a topside where cars could ride.
And I alone walked across the city turned over and on the same road,
but knowing that I was meant to walk here for it was paved as it flowed.
Others could not see where I walked but there was comfort to me
in the fact that my road had painted lines: I walk where I'm meant to be.
For out of place is a place, though not on a map to be found
And nobody knows where any road goes: tomorrow is unknown ground.

My numb stare out the window
lands my eye on a distant branch.
Near the top of a cottonwood across the farmyard
Beside a dry dead limb
I can see the roundish rippling form
Of one leaf in its winded dance.
It swings from its stem erratically
As it's tossed in the fitful air
And my seeing the stem and the leaf
Though far off, somehow TAKES me there.
And I know the leaf glossy, and how rough the bark
And it's real though it's far and far.
So my thoughts of you take me distance and worlds
Away. Though you're gone from me, there you are.
Though you're gone,
there we are.

I glimpsed a pitch black butterfly
Out of the corner of my life
I think it's flown round here before
Its wings a cold dark knife

I know I've seen pure light shine through
The flaming dying leaf
Its shine my only sanctuary
In the raging battle of grief.

The light the dark I see them yes
With eyes that are not clear
But will not close to black butterflies
Or to the light that is always near.