Monday, February 13, 2023

Taste This Perfect Offering (Hebrews 10:5)

If I called them by another name
Could I make saviors of these demons?
What is sacrificed, what is gained
This alchemy is for the sake of harmony within
If being a woman in the world is painful enough
Why bring a child into it?
Adjusting will for equilibrium
I choose to use it for creation
Of my own secret weapon
Receptivity is an action, neither passive nor inert
Oh, Kindly Ones, taste the sweet burn 
Of nitroglycerin upon your tongues
As I secrete my inexhaustible sense of self.


Joy

With transfigured gentleness
She parts with a loving kiss
Fortune already in flight
In a moment of bliss, she is absent
But always returns holding hands
With sadness.


Untitled

A dog trots beside its owner
Like a well-trained soldier
The metal tags around its collar jangle
In syncopated rhythm 
I hear this with my human ears
And wonder how mine must sound
In the celestial realm.


Barren

Spring brings a fog
That cradles our belief
That home is not just an elusive boundary
Of imagined comfort and safety
An illusory hope, a mirage
But one we manifest concrete (or so we think)
With four walls, a two car garage...

The dead of winter clears the mind
Time slows, allowing for new sight
And we remember this is our sickness unto death;
Just like Thomas Wolfe said:
You can never go home again.

Return, return in the fall I did
To see what I'd left behind
A full season between us 
I walked for miles in a straight line
Searching the shore for your black truck,
Trying to imagine what it was
That had made you love this patch of beach so much.
Ready to give up, I rested by the surf to watch the osprey hunt
Many moments passed, yet none appeared
And I thought to myself,
"I'd never go fishing here."


Thursday, December 29, 2022

Vantage

I watch with equal eyes
When I hear the roar
Of screaming machines
And see their paths cross 
With the silent hawk

I watch with equal eyes 
Those dense earth bones
Whose only dream
Is to also see with great distance
And to rule from above
The great big below

I watch with equal eyes 
As I think how far we’ve come
In another whirl around the sun
Like Icarus who wore 
His father's faulty wings
I tangle my glory in yours

I watch with equal eyes
As we fall out of the sky
Then remember how to soar


Fortune

Fruit
Not of the sea 
Washed up
On the beach
Juices leaked 
Into the arid sand 
Ripening

Driftwood
Planted ashore
Crowned with
A nine inch iron beacon
Half hammered
Rusting


Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Pilot

He will never walk among
The kings of wands.
An obsession with desire,
Though a desirable affection,
He is only king of my thoughts;
A beautiful craft constructed from
Aluminum touches, muffled voices;
His hands grip the yoke.
Tonight, I tell him which way to go,
And he teaches me what I already know—
Go fast, go slow—what difference does it make?
Our destination is always the same;
The pilot owns the navigator,
The sky owns our fate.