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

I finally watched the Planned Parenthood video wherein practitioners of abortion swap methods of harvesting babies (for scientific purposes, of course).

Ugh.

I had to look up “dig”–which is short for inducing a fatal heart attack in a doomed fetus–order to circumvent laws against partial-birth abortion.

The central lie of the abortion industry all these years was the right of women to conspire with their “healthcare providers” to rid themselves of “globs of tissue.”

Never mind that this has always been a well-documented fiction.

The “globs of tissue” were always our children.

Living. Breathing. Viable. Babies.

The numbers for these dead children are now in the tens of millions–a whole country of dead children.  Some now so long dead that if their mothers had chosen to allow them life, they would now be old enough to govern their own country.

It goes without saying abortion would not be legal there.

But there is this as well–the video of the nice Texas ladies obligingly discussing delivering doomed fetuses “spine first” so as to better serve the researchers who wait to buy their stem cells, severed spines and all–puts the lie to more than just the glob theory.

They prove these little ones have always been whole, alive, human.

They also prove we no longer are. If we were we would feel the necessary pain associated with the medical extermination of our own children.

sitting by a beautiful 

Window

Looking out on an unbroken sea

Busy in His thoughts

(It is an infinite

Universe, after all)

When you (little you)

Speak words to The Divine

He stops everything to listen

Rapt in love 

Because to Him

You are that dear

It seems to me the persistent

Drip of water

On your captive imagination

Or insects in sufficient multitudes

A thousand casual

Acts of war

Should all be enough to 

Clue you in (my dear)

Hell is real

And has been for some time now 

Don’t pretend you cannot 

Imagine what would remain 

With only Light removed

From our collective 

Equation.

i just broke up

With “advanced laser solution”

Not that I don’t need advanced laser solutions…

I do.  I truly do

Physics and history work their genius

On so many pieces

Of me

Slipping from freedom

I cut lose from these persistent words

To all the other liberating break-ups–

People I used to know

Now so many

Strangers.

there have been times

In the last six years

When I have thought

Look! The insomnia has abated 

…Low tide….

….Rain after a drought….

…A decent President…

Ephemeral

You think, saved! But your reason retorts–not so fast

I get irritable by 1:47 in the morning

Knowing why I inhabit these midnight places

Ghosts are familiar

Girl in the dark

I wish I could have travelled back to you 

There believing only you 

Were awake in the world 

Travel back to tell you

I Am.  I am here

J reminds me of this–one more videotape I could not watch.  Each night I would attempt to make sense of the mess–hand wash dishes, sweep floors.

This particular night there was an apple, red, nearly perfect.  Only one baby bite etched into its skin.

A few inches away there was another.  Same MO–one tiny bite removed from its skin.  Then another and another until the rest of the bag lay at the end of a trail of beautiful red apples, each grazed by the tiny perfect teeth of a wandering toddler.
Baby, really.  You were still just a beautiful, perfect baby.

We laughed at your perfect crime.  Filmed it for posterity.  Aware that you were borrowed and that the trail you left was indelible.