A.D.

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Elea Lee

you must believe in

The invisible world–

Atoms, neutrons, quarks

And other molecular angels

These bits of light and matter

Swirl around us

Halos of an inevitable world

You bend to kiss his brow

No longer visible with naked eye.

But what of the others?

There to receive him

Just beyond the scrim

Clouds of witnesses

The insubstantial irreplaceable

Eternal us

Funny how often Lincoln shows up in our

Iterations of heaven

And how young grandma always looks

As though you and I could

Stand the light

Ten million stars are just

This single flickering candle in

A fleck of night

He dusts off his shoulder,

Strong right arm

Gathers our once-mortal hearts

Into immortal, imperishable we

We who will stand

Candidates for this eternal

Song sung loud

By our six year old selves

Forever

Stillness

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Elea Lee

stay in the box

All cardboard and glue

The bars you have hewn with your fingernails

Purely arbitrary

But wait still

Look for the way the open spaces

Casts shadows

Train your ears for approaching

Footsteps that

Do not come

You will be alone with the voice in your head

Telling you be still

And know that I am God.

Vorkuta

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Elea Lee

halo

One hundred miles above the

Arctic circle

So cold the sun

Will fail to even graze

Skin of men bound in iron and chains

Click of light and dark, tracks and ties

Train.

To a string of gulags

Resembling nothing less than

Rough pearls

Which are surely

The opposite of coal

Torn from the frozen chest

By men whose bone-deep desperation

mix with their fear

As air bleeds out

We all dream of

of fire

Archangel

So far beneath the buried heart

Of this vertiginous stone

Planet

Don’t worry, I know we are all cowards

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Elea Lee

this is a parable

We are all parables

Stories of light and darkness

It takes only one

Candle lit in the dark

To make light

Someone always must be

Burning, held high

For all the dying

shadows to see

“I will never leave you nor forsake you”

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Elea Lee

Over the course of my life I have been booted out of a variety of clubs..oh…I mean communities of faith. Always for taking a stand on some issue, always with the subsequent silence and loss.

Financial accountability. Child safety. Confronting greed, lust or both–there are all kinds of ways to trudge down the “narrow road” in christianity.

Which is sometimes confusing and disorienting but never totally forsaken.

Jesus is there, saying what he says to all of us–I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

We will never get that kind of promise from anyone else. We humans are nothing if not forsakers. We bolt at a pin drop.

Not him. Jesus stays with us.

And always he says the same thing. “You are in good company, darling…always.”

“Most Americans” and “This message has no content”

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Elea Lee

There are these nuggets of meaning (or anti-meaning) floating around

Zika fears, Pokéstops

Two presidential candidates

Each holding silk screened banners

The lesser of two evils!

2016,

When “most Americans”

Were once again depicted by

The hastily gathered

Opinions of just a few of us

Through the ghostly-lit rectangular screen

The message seems important somehow

But when we look further

The news is bleak-

This message has no content

Quest

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Elea Lee

gone too long

A litany of good-byes

Signifying everything

We want from Light

The shapes of letters resemble

Hands raised in supplication

Bottomless things

Somewhere in between I find you

In the story you beg me not to tell

Even though you are the hero of it

The boy who quietly

Saves the headstrong girl

From so many foolish choices

Chili Recipes

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Elea Lee

slow cooked, tail-gated

Cumin-laced

Beans or no beans

Chili recipes seem innocuous enough

Unless you are a cow

Then

They are simply another

Recipe for disaster

Light

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Elea Lee

light

With the exception (perhaps)

Of biolumescence

Always burns

Always the symptom, the result, the flood

Of fire

So when He says these things about light

They would have been connected in a way we are not

With the pure physical fact–

Where there is light

Something

Someone

Must burn

Apparition

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Elea Lee

after years measured in either sabbaticals or fists

The woman in the box

Realizes she has only been an apparition

Sorting through previous

Versions of “her”

She sees one to nurture–

No lines around the eyes or heart

An ordinary girl

Who believed in human intervention

Fragile thing, scoops her up

Just a bird in the hand;

Looks for a place to set her down

If only to assess

the utility of wings

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: Poetry