Tag: poems

While the World Tilts Toward Sleep

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The cat calls for her dinner.
On the porch I bend and pour
brown soy stars into her bowl,
stroke her dark fur.
It’s not quite night.
Pinpricks of light in the eastern sky.
Above my neighbor’s roof, a transparent
moon, a pink rag of cloud.
Inside my house are those who love me.
My daughter dusts biscuit dough.
And there’s a man who will lift my hair
in his hands, brush it
until it throws sparks.
Everything is just as I’ve left it.
Dinner simmers on the stove.
Glass bowls wait to be filled
with gold broth. Sprigs of parsley
on the cutting board.
I want to smell this rich soup, the air
around me going dark, as stars press
their simple shapes into the sky.
I want to stay on the back porch
while the world tilts
toward sleep, until what I love
misses me, and calls me in.
~Dorianne Laux “On the Back Porch” from Awake

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch” from A Timbered Choir

If just for a moment,
when the world feels like it is tilting so far
I just might fall off,
there is a need to pause
to look at where I’ve been
and get my feet back under me.

The porch is a good place to start:
a bridge to observe “out there”
without completely leaving the safety of “in here.”

I am outside looking squarely at uncertainty
yet still hear and smell and taste
the love that dwells just inside these walls.

What do any of us want more
than to be missed if we were to step away
or be taken from this life?

Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch
never to be replaced,
its absence a hole impossible to fill?

When we are called back inside to the Love
that made us who we are,
may we leave behind the outside world
more beautiful because we were part of it.

Stronger Than Seems Possible

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Light comes softly through the morning mist,
splinters as it settles on dewdrops that dangle

from the web. Pulled taut and lovely, the web
stretches above a mass of leaves-

green, amethyst, and pale rose.
silken lines hold fast to spindly branches,

all anchored to the center, geometric
rings of connection, so delicate, so strong

like this catch-all we call life,
how we gather what we think we need

for sustenance, how prisms of light flash
and fade on the fragile structures we create,

how we tremble through storms
holding on, stronger than seems possible.
~Lois Edstrom “A Fragile Light” from MoonPath Press 2025

I too am feeling stretched, trying to connect between post and branch and leaf and ground.

I move between them, sometimes not sure where I’ll land or what I’ll leave behind. Connection is a hard and heavy work of strength and aspiration, not knowing what stands firm in a world where wind and rain and storms or an oblivious creature can tear things all asunder.

Sometimes what I weave is both beautifully delicate and strong.

Sometimes it is easily shredded, full of holes, and ultimately useless.

The center doesn’t always hold. 
The tethers loosen. 
The periphery sags, frays and tears.

It is a matrix of fragile light, yet holding on…

…something created with purpose and intention.
Simply that effort makes it all worthwhile.

I’ll try again tomorrow.

(Lois Edstrom is my poet friend who lives on nearby Whidbey Island; my web photo at the top of this post is the cover for her new book of poems: A Fragile Light)

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Hiding in a Snail’s Eye

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May the poems be
the little snail’s trail.

Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record

of the foot’s silver prayer.
              I lived once.
              Thank you.
              It was here.
~Aracelis Girmay “Ars Poetica”  

Little snail,
Dreaming you go.
Weather and rose
Is all you know.
Weather and rose
Is all you see,
Drinking
The dewdrop’s
Mystery.
~Langston Hughes “Snail”

James was a very small snail…
and gave the huffle of a snail in danger.
And nobody heard him at all.
~A.A.Milne from The Four Friends from  “When We Were Very Young”

…who has a controlled sense of wonder
before the universal mystery,
whether it hides in a snail’s eye
or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ?
~Loren Eiseley from The Star Thrower

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.
~Thom Gunn “Considering the Snail”

What do we leave behind as we pass through this life, following the light?

It might be as slick and silvery and random as a snail trail —
hardly and barely there, easily erased, only a transient residual.

We might leave behind the solid hollow of an empty shell, its spirals leading to infinity, curling to nothing and everything.

As for my trail:
I pray for a legacy of words and images reflecting the Light I seek,
to notice and share the wonder I journey through.

Yes, I was once here.
And so were you.

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Through the years, the sorrow
The joy that we borrow
The tears that we share with the rain
Oh today, tomorrow
Forever I’ll follow your trail
Just call my name
~Sean Rowe

Feeling Them Resting There

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The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still.
I went over to the graveyard beside the church
and found them under the old cedars…
I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there,
but I did…

I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated
with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is
would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come.
~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

In great deeds, something abides. 
On great fields, something stays. 
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; 
but spirits linger, 
to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. 

And reverent men and women from afar, 
and generations that know us not and that we know not of, 
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, 
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, 
and the power of the vision pass into their souls. 

This is the great reward of service. 
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for six decades.

I started reading. I felt them resting in those inked words.

My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.

They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together before Dad died of cancer at age 73.

A presence of absence: the letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting – lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for the early years together you gave up to make today possible for us and the generations to follow.

I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”

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What a Little Thing

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Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years
To remember with tears!
~William Allingham “A Memory”

Tell no one of the wonders
of the Mallard duck’s green head,
how it glistens in the sun
against the gentle red
of the Willow branches budding
in the golden spring sun,
as they paddle through the waters
where the creek has come undone.

Tell no one of the beauty
of the butterflies that flit
through the flowers not yet budding
on the little sandy spit,
how their wings will keep them searching
for the hope that blooms in Spring
as they hover over what will be
a very lovely thing.

Tell no one of the glory
or the warmth of young spring’s sun,
of the joy that comes from watching
the smallest creatures run,
of the life that is teeming
in the wake of newborn day,
of the power that hope holds
over all we do and say.

Tell no one of the miracle
that is this daily life,
that cuts you to the quick
as if with sharpest knife.
Tell no one what you notice,
into which your wonder delves.
Tell no one of these things —
let them know it for themselves.
~Elizabeth Wickland “Tell No One”

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

~William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939

so much depends
upon me riding a red trike
chased by my little brother

now rusty memories frozen in time
and cobwebs

such a little thing is
never to be forgotten

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A Sentence That Changes Your Life

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As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so
the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together

and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers.
Imperceptibly heaving with the old impatience, it knows

for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary of hay.
The horses, sway-backed and self important, cannot design

how the small white pony mysteriously escapes the fence everyday.
This is the miracle just beyond their heavy-headed grasp,

and they turn from his nuzzling with irritation. Everything
is crying out. Two crows, rising from the hill, fight

and caw-cry in mid-flight, then fall and light on the meadow grass
bewildered by their weight. A dozen wasps drone, tiny prop planes,

sputtering into a field the farmer has not yet plowed,
and what I thought was a phone, turned down and ringing,

is the knock of a woodpecker for food or warning, I can’t say.
I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.

But in this world, where something is always listening, even
murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan

in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be
all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget

what you are. There will come a day when the meadow will think
suddenly, water, root, blossom, through no fault of its own,
and the horses will lie down in daisies and clover. Bedeviled,
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words

that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life.
~Marie Howe “The Meadow” from The Good Thief

I am constantly looking for the sentence that will change my life.

I search high and low:
in books, on tape, in sermons,
and in everyday conversation.

I listen.

I realize it will not be a brand new revelation.
Instead, it is a very very old sentence:

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 8:12

I look for the Light in the most unexpected places, and if I find it, I always try to share it here…

What is a sentence that has changed your life?

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A Blink of God’s Eye…

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Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.
~L.M. Montgomery

One has to wonder where they got
their reputation for pansiness.
Purple and proud, or any color
you might imagine, they grow
where they want to grow, despite the cold,
so much unlike their flashy cousins,
impatiens, petunias, scarlet sage,
petals falling off at first frost,
hardly hearty at all.
Keep your prima donna blossoms,
loud and boastful annuals, brief
and seedless. I’ll take the pansies
of the world, unassuming, resilient,
quietly doing what they know to do
~Scott Owen “Pansies”

As a seed, I was shot out the back end of a blue jay
when, heedless, she flew over the meadow.
She had swallowed me in my homeland when she spied me
lying easy under the sun—briefly, I called her Mother
before I passed through her gullet like a ghost.
In a blink of God’s eye I was an orphan. I trembled
where I fell, alone in the dirt. That first night
was a long night, early May and chilly, and I remember
rain filled my furrow. I called out for mercy—
only a wolverine wandered by. I cursed my luck,
I cursed the happenstance of this world, I smelled
his hot stink, but he nosed me deep into the mud—
this was the gift of obscurity. I germinated, hidden
from the giants of earth, the jostling stalks,
the various, boisterous bloomers, and this was my salvation.
After seven days and nights I pushed through—
yes. Here I am, kissable: your tiny, purple profusion.
~Lisa Bellamy “Wild Pansy”

The world is in sore need of a cure for the grumbles.

Fortunately, it exists right outside in our back yards, along sidewalks and in gravelly vacant lots.

A cheerful face is irresistible to all but the crabbiest among us, guaranteed to bring a smile every time.

Beyond the obvious charm exists a depth of heart — roots able to thrive in the thinnest of soil, at home among rocks and weeds,  resilient even when tromped on.

We carry its seeds on the tread of our boots despite our grumbling and help spread the good news: anger left unfed will dry up and blow away.

Yet the constant loyal heart of the pansy will last. 
It keeps smiling back – simply a twinkle in God’s eye.

For pansies are, I think, the little gleams
Of children’s visions from a world of dreams,
Jewels of innocence and joy and mirth,
Alight with laughter as they fall to earth.

So tread not rashly, children, lest you crush
A part of childhood in a thoughtless rush.
Would you not treat them gently if you knew
Pansies are little bits of children too?
~R.X. Lehmann from “Pansies”

So Starved for Hope

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I know what you planned, what you meant to do, teaching me
to love the world, making it impossible
to turn away completely, to shut it out completely ever again –
it is everywhere; when I close my eyes,
birdsong, scent of lilac in early spring, scent of summer roses:
you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection with earth –
why would you wound me, why would you want me
desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved for hope
I would refuse to see that finally
nothing was left to me, and would believe instead
in the end you were left to me.
~Louise Glück “Vespers” (one of ten Vespers poems)

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;
~Psalm 130:5

Mid-spring days like this:
bright, so promising with potential,
birdsong constantly in the air,
scent of orchard blossoms, lilacs,
early roses and a flush of color everywhere…

how can we not love the world so much we never want to leave it?

Yet we must hold this loosely.

It is but a tiny show of the glories to come,
of what You have waiting for us next.

I am wounded knowing I must eventually let this go.

I am hungry for hope that isn’t found
in all this beauty and lushness,
the fulfilling hope that is only
You as my Father and Creator.

You provide only a taste here.
I know what I starve for,
so starved with hope for what You have in store.

I will wait for you
I will wait for you
in the end You were left for me.

Amen and Amen.

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The Annual Dogwood Miracle

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After all, I don’t see why I am always asking
for private, individual, selfish miracles
when every year there are miracles like … dogwood.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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It began last week. The tree right next to our front porch, having looked dormant for the past six months, started to bud out in subtle pink-petalled blossoms.

Through the winter, there had been nothing remarkable whatsoever about this tree. Now it is a feast for the eyes, almost blinding in its brilliance.

Each year the dogwood startles me awake. From dead to brilliant in a mere two weeks. And not only our tree, but every other pink dogwood within a twenty mile radius has answered the same late April/early May siren call:
bloom!
bloom your heart out!
dazzle every retina in sight!

And it is done simultaneously on every tree, all the same day, without a sound, without an obvious signal, as if an invisible conductor had swooped a baton up and in the downbeat everything turned pink.

Or perhaps the baton is really a wand, shooting out pink stars to paint these otherwise plain and humble trees, so inconspicuous the rest of the year.

Ordinarily I don’t dress up in finery like these trees do.  I prefer inconspicuous earth tones for myself. But I love the celebratory joy of those trees in full blossom and enjoy looking for them in yards and parks and along roadways.

Maybe there is something pink in my closet I can wear. Maybe conspicuously miraculous every once in awhile is exactly what is needed.

Then again, it is best to leave the miracles to the trees…

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If you stand in an orchard
In the middle of Spring
and you don’t make a sound
you can hear pink sing,
a darling, whispery song of a thing.
~Mary O’Neill from Hailstones and Halibut Bones “Pink”

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The Way I See the World

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Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world
~W.S. Merwin “Elegy for a Walnut” from The Moon Before Morning

Today I stood under the kitchen
archway and stepped into
my new body. Pasta was on the stove,
a cold Tupperware of string beans
on the counter. But I knew.
I knew I would never be the same—
the way I’m certain the magnolia
down the block has lost
all its petals. I haven’t checked
in days, but I’m convinced
tomorrow when I take my son
to the bus stop, I’ll see them
splashed on the sidewalk.
What I’m trying to say is
sometimes your old skin
falls breathlessly off your body
in late April, as you slice
a cucumber into half moons
for your child,
and you just stand there
and let it.
~Wendy Wisner “Shedding” from The New Life: Poems

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This grand old tree defines the seasons for me
while it parallels my own aging.

This past winter’s storms took its branches down in the night
with deafening cracks so loud
I feared to see what remnant
remained in the morning.

Yet it still stands, intrepid,
ready for another round of seasons–
though tired, sagging, broken at the edges,
it’s always reaching to the sky.

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