This Soul's Poetry

Knocking Gentle as You are, O Gracious One, You wait, knocking quietly, waiting for one to look up and out. If the door is open, simply a crack, You will push through and past one’s fear, one’s timidity, one’s self-absorption and narrow mindedness so that one may be embraced with Your vast vision. If the door is open You will enter, and more importantly draw us out from narrow confines into Your glorious, cosmic, largeness. 4/2008 From the Witness She shines mostly white in the full moon under the feeder where this skunk noses for the left-behind seeds birds had flung in their own pillaging. Humming birds dance with breath taking abandon playfully teasing each other across the backyard. A predawn, foggy blanket shrouds the fields; the greyness lightens. Who am I to witness such glory? One can only bow in gratitude. 9/2009 Sacred Vessel How do bodies apprehend so much pain, stillness, joy, love? A deep-grieved wail pierces the curiously calm from the same depths the dance spirals forth or the flute’s song sounds. We must be, somehow, Sacred vessels of the Divine, Holy Tabernacles of Love, individually and communally, God’s Word enfleshed. 7/2010 Tides The sacred ebb and flow, the pull of the moon, fills the rocky tidal basin. The pouring in of the sea and its receding, smooth the jagged rock, polish the broken stone. The rolling against the larger cliff below— stone on stone pushed by the wave, throwing, bumping them together in relationship like it or not. The wet ones’ shine and glimmer while the dry stones begin to warm in the sun. Some are left with salt rings. 7/2010 Morning Bliss Barn swallows dance in the great expanse above the bean fields doing grand “Hey for fours!”* catching breakfast as they pass. Clouds capture the eastern light throwing it jubilantly above the trees, announcing: “A new day! It comes!” Rooster down the road just crowed and crow in the Japanese elm just cawed. In between, the chirping of the chipping sparrow and sweet melodies of robin and red-winged black bird. My soul seems to whither if I don’t soak in the morning bliss of creation singing it’s morning praise. 8/2010 *A move done in Contra Dance, a type of early American folk dance Sophia Sophia! Descend with your many gifts as you did that Pentecost so long and not so long ago. Enflame today, as you did then, the women, men, children gathered. Enflame hearts and lives to love passionately, without reserve, every person— brooking no exclusion. Sophia, Compassionate Mother, assure each one, “You are my Beloved.” and invite us to embrace that identity, to live that deep truth in solidarity with all peoples and all creation. You weep with us and for us. You give to drink from the well of Your deep compassion. You pour Your soothing refreshing waters over the parched places of our souls. Your womb births us. Your tears of compassion wash us. Your living waters nurture our growth. As one centers more deeply in You, the more expansive and all embracing can your love be lived in our lives. 7-8/2011 Partnership We create these partnerships— the winged ones and I. I provide a few nuts and seeds, and they sing their morning symphony. A grander “Gloria Deo!” has hardly ever been sung. I offer sweet water and am gifted with enough stillness that I might appreciate the lovely ruby band. 5/2012