She says

“That was too short!“

I tell her that it would have been longer if

She had been quiet faster

Will you write another one if I am quiet? She asks

Hard to, nay impossible to,

Say no

Beautiful mockingbird

Origami daughters

Their hair ribbons of color and light like their mothers

Were-are-will be

nothing shall be impossible”

Wind! Birds! Mockingbird! Mother!

He is

The wind that shakes the trees, lifts the wings

Heals the world

(John chapter 3–all of it!)

The Persistent Song

Like the scent of evocative perfume

The words lift across

the street of a town named for a long-shot Gospel writer

Words about finding love and fish in the oceans

Surprisingly geographically specific

Pacific Ocean…Indian Ocean

These similes for lost love

A thin, reedy, fearless voice

Neon lights

Somethings are lost in the now

Known only to the One who sees

The not yet the will be

Impossibles come true

One day we will all know

The words

Pareidolia

Within days of the end of an era I lay beneath a cloudy night sky and drew faces from slow moving clouds and stars and planets

I resisted the urge to cup your face in my hand or bang the flats of my palms against the heavy plate glass of the cathedral

Yell your name

But I had to

Had to

Had to

Touch the hem of your garment

Pray you turn and say my name

The Frog King

He would be

A lovely boy who lived

Close to the frog pond

The tadpoles would catch glimpses

Of him through the refractory waters

Walking to and fro in the cool of the day

But could they trust their love? How could they ever measure up?

How many froglings does it take to amalgamate

A suitable consort for a King?

All of them with all their hearts

Eyes fixed skyward

To see his face and speak at last in the tongues of

Men and angels

The Dark House

I have not thought about the dark house in years.

There were roads not taken—a house in the woods, a beautiful Victorian with no yard, a dog-less condo.

When you are old you realize how much you did badly

So many regrets.

But not the landlady, not the note, not the conversation between the nice neighbor and the petulant four year old

Defiant on the roof of the porch when she should have been sleeping

Later, much later, she would sleep when she should have been

Defiant on the porch of the house

I pray the time machine prayer

Dear God, permeate the darkness, the loneliness, the horror, the nightmare, the hell the children went through

Let them sing in the courts of the Temple of God

Hosanna, hosanna in the highest!!

How to want…to be His friend

You have to see past the blood—your own and his

The stinging sweat and the jeering crowds

The voice in your own pounding brain

Nay, voices—

Saying that no king of anything could die like this

Alone and vulnerable in the dumpster fire of all

You have to focus on his eyes

What he sees and what is reflected in them

Love beyond measure/sky without end

And you must listen to his voice

Agony is too small a word for what he has done for us

The fire of the wrath of a holy God

Substitutionary Everything

Nothing left without Him.

Why should God let you into Heaven?

The spooky looking woman stood in the cold storage room of a thousand embryo banks

Wild-haired

Wild-eyed

Barely human

Trying to teach the little ones the answer-

Why should He let us in?

For God so

Loved the

World

That He gave

His One and Only

Begotten Son

That whosoever

Believes in Him (Yeshua)

Should not…

Perish…lose the ticket…be barred from admission…let go of his hand..forget his face…let their pride conquer Truth

But have Eternal Life

Someone has to watch out for bears

This was a long time ago

Four beautiful young women decided to go camping on a weekend in the spring. They drove to the hills of Virginia with a cooler full of food but no charcoal or lighter fluid.

They had not anticipated the crowds.

The only thing left was offsite camping

Grown ups took pity on them and gave them some properly grilled food when their firewood was green

They had set the tent up before dark but returned to it in the night

Prayer and a flashlight got them back to it in the dense spring woods

Once there, two slept easily

Confident the other two would

Stay alert for bears, and much worse, intruders in the dark