Category Archives: God

Happy Birthday to Me

Posted on by
Reply

Last year I had not yet written an obscure self-published memoir called Just: a story of the lost and found.

I was not on Facebook. I was a private citizen wading through the havoc and grief caused by our decision to adopt a boy who would rob us all of our innocence.

My birthday is a watermark. Three years ago I did not know my children were being abused. We found out the weekend of Columbus Day 2009.

Rough memory
It stalks through family
Pictures, movies
Dates and times
No one is safe from it
The dark ominous
Scowl of truth

I have given myself some birthday gifts:
The gift of freedom from what people think
The gift of mobility
The gift of prayer (to the God Who Indeed Lives)
The gift of preservation and strength for my children
I have walked away from people I wanted to trust because they did not fight for my children
I fought instead

So it will be strange for me today, my birthday because I do celebrate these years–this gift of a broken life redeemed.

And I bless my God, my Friend for this new community He has given me

In place of the years
The locusts have eaten

I served my time…

Posted on by
Reply

To understand the old woman
Walking down the quiet street
Tonight with a baby
Sleeping in her arms
You would have to look
Back to a room
In a borrowed house
Wooden floors/old carpet
And chairs from a garage sale
Heavy with layers
Of paint the two children
Small, shocking
Red
Hair they match each other not taking
Time outs in those beat up chairs/rooms/carpet
Years I don’t just
Wanna forget
Wanna unravel
Why he could hurt me so much
For so many years
And hurt my babies too?

They wiggle off the chairs
Again and again
Hold them the caseworker says
Hold onto them
I think
Until I had to let them go

The Hell of Words

Posted on by
Reply

Once
When you were still a boy
I walked with you
Into cool water in a dying light
No deeper than your waist
Although the gulf itself
Stretched for miles
Out forever

When I draw words for hell
I get them from Sartre
Not Jesus
Or Dante
Like lighting a match
To draw fire

This room is airless enough
The faces of it’s inhabitants
Never vary/a rictus of pain

I wonder…
Are you as afraid as I am
Of the little things
That last
Forever?
And the possibility
That there will be
No way out.

After the Dry Season

Posted on by
Reply

Used to
Take it for granted–
Rain come down

But now I don’t.

When the sky darkens
I hold still
Lightning snakes
Across the sky
I rejoice

Thunder calls out
The name of God
Alive still in the world

Rain falls
And I take nothing for granted
Splendor falls in a million pieces
Of refracted light
Makes gray avenues live
Each drop happy patter
From impossible clouds
Trees solemn in waiting
Doze above this parched earth
Gathering in it’s hands
Luminous pools
Of water

Clay pots and true treasure

Posted on by
Reply

The story involves a baby swatting a vase which then rolls off a table to the bench below. The vase is visibly chipped by not shattered.

We mourn for a few seconds
That we could not fix it
That we could not have snatched it from the edge

The kids watch for my reaction
I tell them, that is why we buy vases from Goodwill.

Peace.
I know that this simple event is crucial for us because my reaction provides traction for my kids. What I did not do or say reflects my priorities as much as what I did.

My child is the treasure. All the vases in the world are not as precious as one dear little child.

The rest is dust.

Covering

Posted on by
Reply

Isaiah 28:20 (NIV)
The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.

I maintain
That poetry
Is what prophets write
When ordinary warnings
Fail

Prophesy
How you will be
Good
Preach to me
About tomorrow
Whether it will rain
And we will all
Be swept away
By all the things we never said
Before the invention
Of the rain
-bow.

Super Powers

Posted on by
Reply

Isaiah 27:1 (NIV)
In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword, his fierce, great and powerful sword, Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea.

No, it is the child
Raised in a shambled house
With the dark monsters of uncertainty
Humorless play fellows

I want to say
Promise me
You will not hurt
This living child
This eternal being
Already bound
For sorrow

Isaiah 25

Posted on by
Reply

Isaiah 25:8,11 (NIV)
he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. [11] They will spread out their hands in it, as a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim. God will bring down their pride despite the cleverness of their hands.

Kept having the same dream
The water be gone
I look for it
Missing
Watch it pour down
Look to the clouds for rain
Plead to the Lord
Rain.
Rain come down
Wash my sin away
Give me the hands
To spread through
The water
The pool
Source of the
Girl I once was

The Ghosts

Posted on by
Reply

We have to talk about it
Even though we don’t want to
The ways we are broken
The way the past haunts me

I don’t think it haunts you
The same
Like two different ghosts
Mine brings me beautiful picture
Then wryly points to
The darkness behind them

And yours
Merely piles
Rejection letters on your desk
From all the cool people
And the clubs they go to
Without us

Eclipse of Light

Posted on by
2

It was a solar eclipse
Splashing darkness
Across half the earth
Like a child stretching his blanket
Across the bare
Wood staircase–
Upstairs young man!
His mother admonishes

Never realizing
His life is the smallest
Gossamer thread

From her life to mine

They say
if you try
To look
Directly into the sun
During an eclipse
Seek professional help

Do they mean scientists or
Psychology?

I won’t know.

I just
Know
That staring
Straight into the
Face of God himself
Is impossible hubris
Unless…
The shadow of the Cross
Shields the mortal
Eye