That bad dream you have when you try to scream–

hollow howl

No words 

For the kitchen, the children, the overturned life

Child abandonment does not do this justice 

For the kind of hell we can ignore

In the smokestacks of Auschwitz

Or the death of a child

Turn away

Because the kind

Of empathy

This would require 

Is unbearable

Sometimes we can see the direct harm a person or a few people can do to others–a murder, a kidnapping, a traitor…terrorists…

Can do damage.  Change lives from life to death or light to the night of grief.

I acknowledge this.

But it makes me wonder about the people who bring life from death, light in the dark.

We all have a choice–be the handful, one way or the other–bring light, bring life.

Eternal.

it was clear and cool that day

The kids from church came over

We dressed you in your favorite clothes 

A police car sat (ominously) 

Nearby

The caseworker (not your own)

Came to the lawyer’s rental house

Our messy home

To take you away

I believed in miracles

Moses in the bullrushes

But your dad (foster, of course)

Did not

So when she took you from his arms

He wailed.

He doesn’t cry

But that day he did

The day I last saw you through

The tinted glass

Of the woman’s beat

Up old SUV

You were my angel baby

Gone, without a trace

It was a clear blue day that day

There was a police car

Sitting  (ominously) down the block

Each print eidetic 

Etched in the raw chemistry of grief

No words,

Only me the ghost, howling out mother-love

While your new parents went out

For a celebratory dinner.

Since I was a child

(So far from here)

I have been homesick

Lost in the sea of this wide world

So broken

It comes over me now

This longing for home

There is a reason we long for safety

Best I can do is run for Jesus

Man across the street

Standing waiting for me to see Him

The shadow of the Cross, the memory of the whip

All our lonely yesterdays

And so-bright tomorrows

In Your matchless words

Love

A woman writes

Pictures in black and  shades of gray

On these dim prison walls 

Ephemeral graphite

So soft we are

Bits of stardust

Made incarnadine 

Diamonds, a multitudinous sea

you and I

Will never

shake our carbon 

Footprint

Of the Divine

God breaths life into dust 

There is a map 

Somewhere in the traces of granite

An ancient story 

The bones of dragons

Sewn in this field

Come to life