Oh, I love him. I love him to pieces.
“The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.”
-Pablo Neruda
[Click photo to view a larger version.]
what you at my gentle spoken friend
i lack a frame to put you in
when you’re an ocean and a rock away
i feel you in the pocket of my overcoat
my fingers wrap around your words
they take the shape of games we play
i feed your words through my buttonholes
pin them to my fingerless gloves
green and prone to fraying
Continue reading “[listen] ‘ocean & a rock’ [lisa hannigan]”
i think our house is in need of some giant letters.
the changing of the months always pulls at me
pulls at me the way the numbers are swallowed up
in a new page
and a new “1”
neatly stacked up in the corner of the glossy calenderial sheet
like a new horizon that somehow
Continue reading “volumes of the future [poetry]”
What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside–
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it’s all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles–
each a different height–
are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt–
frog at the edge of a pond–
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches. -Billy Collins
by the firelight of wakened waves
and silent clouds of whistling stars
the universe shifted, thread by thread
and all the waves of the cobalt night
shifted in sleep and turned in bed.
when the sunlight breathed and woke the world
and verde leaves grew greener still
the dew sank low into the red clay earth
the oceans swayed and azul spilled
while creation sang of the Saviour’s worth.
here a mortal breathed and a mortal prayed
and welcomed dawn and the newest days
and folded sheets and whistled grace
and sought the horizon’s brightest face
knowing well the yonder shore
would bring promises spoken before
and the Light would shine without a veil
and all would kneel and all would hail
wounds made perfect, love made pure —
— prepared for us, beyond deep azure.
-07 july 2009
both images via my brother john
i dream again of a new-soul star
made of the same dust
as these two-ones, and
the pearly newness of
a freshly-made life,
with eyes of green, as yet unseen.
already, beside the calm-blue waters
one waits, hand-made and still,
having not yet crashed through the cosmic firmament
but ready, when the time is right,
to fly on eagle’s wings,
through the stars and heavenlight
into these waiting arms.
i don’t do this thing called writing, anymore. i wake up more tired than the night before, curl my hair into corporate correctness, and box myself in underneath a sickly white glow of flickering fluorescence. i click and add and think and click and everyone once in a while, my chair creaks. i stare at textured tan cubicle lining and my feet inside pointy-toed heels don’t even have room to stretch.
then, i return home and burst into tears at the laundry and the dusty floor, too tired to even eat properly, and turn around and do it all again.
“If she had wings she would fly away and another day God will give her some,” sings James Blunt.
I sigh.
Then Rich Mullins’ voice soars and I can feel the hope inside me returning, the Hope of my Solid Assurance in my Papa God, and Rich sings, “I know that Your Spirit is leading me somewhere beyond all this.”
And I collapse into the arms of my husband and feel the Heavenly Father’s embrace, and know I can do it all again tomorrow for the JOY that is set before me.
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