poetry

A Poem for the Turning of a Year

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How I wander through these 

days, stranger to my own making;

treading on thin spaces, and 

the cracks expand across 

the distance to where You live.

A wind blows and it whispers

Only words of you. A crow 

settles in the trees Outside 

the window and calls

Your name.

You call us, and we hunger. 

You fill us, yet we cannot 

get enough of You.

You, there beside us 

in our kneeling prayer,

claiming us and yet ascending

in Your loving higher

until we are compelled 

to bow 

and love You so our hearts 

may burst 

while knowing we are Yours

and shall be in Your life

and life is Real and sharp

among our ribs.

I watched the crow for days

before I caught the secret

of your love affair

before I saw he only glanced

towards where You stood

rejoicing in his ebony creation.

And I knew my heart 

would burn again

towards You

I knew that I would 

wander, and return

again, 

              would

offer up this world

again 

            and over again

and always it would be

to You.

You will be the song I hum

in the dark, forgetting

Who it is I sing of

You will be the One 

watching, giving 

planting, birthing

                                always

a lopsided love affair

delighting in the 

slow ripening

of my resurrection

calling my name

in the wind 

and the wilding sky.

I began this poem on my 30th birthday this year, and finished it while in Assisi several months later. Since then I’ve returned to it often as a touchstone, a reorientation point, and I felt it would be appropriate to share now as we pass ”the still point of the turning world” (T.S. Eliot) and head into a new year.

May it be a year of journeys, and a year of returnings. May it be a year your soul ripens and expands into new and beautiful wings.

Happy New Year, friends.

Leftover Miracles

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Calais, France

My mouth is narrow.

I cannot open it wide enough

to feast on all that a day offers.

Example: today

the sky is a sinkhole

writing in watercolor

which the crows are circling

(those slicked, stern critics)

there are eleven new roses

swathed around sticks

like tufts of pink cotton

almost too sweet

and a man stops

to tug a bit

on his daughters jacket

and answer why

for the seventh time 

he nearly misses

the shuffling bus

on which everyone notices

each other

and pretends not to

on which two women 

will tell him, what a sweet

child, and he will glance

at another man’s newspaper

surreptitiously.

Onion skins waft

their way into everything

a promise of tomorrow’s 

bounty, and the handprints

climbing up the walls

like a prayer.

And one mother holds

a sick child close 

to her breast, incarnate

Madonna of the one

resting in the corner.

Anything 

could be

ahead –

tiny fingers 

iridescent with suds

wild mornings

that suddenly grow still

the steel blade of hope

knifing its way through

a kind of despair

it is too much

to chew;

I am gulping 

the world down whole

I am managing

only the crumbs 

the leftover miracles

piled into baskets 

(nothing is wasted

after all, keep the

big meals for the ones

with larger stomachs)

I am watching the world 

break open and multiply 

before my very eyes.

Easter Poem

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Through the arched colonnade

Of brick and glass

The sky draped, a cotton sheet

Of Easter blue

Forgotten on some larger being’s

Laundry line

Shuddering in the silent breeze.

The light ran down the glass

In golden waterfalls

Pooled into a thick, caustic shadow

Beneath the greying elms

Hunched into their years 

Of watchkeeping

And whispering to their knees.

And where were you, reader,

When the first fingers of their minds

Crept up out of the wound of earth

And drank it in?

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