Leaves
in sunlight and shadow:
a harmony of greens,
plus the bass notes
of pine.
June reaches
into hope
set free by beauty:
a green time
thrusting into more life.
A Harmony of Greens
Category: poetry
Meeting an Other
When you have touched an other’s
pulsating heart
and felt the difficult path
they’re walking on,
pity becomes respect.
Difficult Person
We are all
unreliable witnesses,
sorting and resorting
our memories
crafted from
what we couldn’t see
(then or now,)
as we pin each reshaped story
to our current consciousness.
Who are you? My enemy?
Or another searching soul
lost in your own
wilderness,
your own storms?
Dawn & Spring
Dawn
Through a dusty screen,
black branches on rosy gold:
morning awaits me.
Spring
Lilacs are leafing
and blossoms budding, green mist
coating trees across the road.
A Day’s Grace
A streak of rosy gold
behind black pines:
the grace of a day beginning.
The silence of a Sunday morning
with lilacs in exquisite bloom
and a squirrel moving under the bush:
time passes and releases
the fragrance of memory
and ghosts of the past.
A Senior’s Spring
The insistent alarm
and furnace sounds ---
I open my eyes and,
out my window, see
young leaves, sun-touched,
sway, disturbed by a squirrel.
I stand hesitantly
and move stiffly
into another morning,
accepting the gift
of this time
and place.
Black winged and gold-tipped
butterflies, and I
feed from the lilacs’ fragrance
and mourn
in this secular wilderness
as I map out my day.
Paradoxes and Other Lessons
With the silence of light in darkness,
with the yearning for tenderness
of an obedient child,
the compounding of grief
and relief
releases
comforting perfume:
scars and other gifts
that have awakened me
in a forgiving world.
—/
The delightful impermanence
of sunlit flickering shadows
shows me a path
out of the fearful
cave, out into
the blue-skyed green-leafing
world,
where storms can pass,
and living through them
teaches the beauty of joy.
A Day of Haikus
Branches with green buds
in the early morning light,
swaying and sun-bless”d
-/
Through bare grey branches
I can see spring’s pink blossoms:
transient beauty.
-/
Ambushed by beauty -
the blossoming Bridalwreath
declaring spring now.
-/
Smoke rises
from the extinguished candle:
the aura lingers.
-/
A New Cairn
With the ambivalence of March weather
I miss the weight of your eyes,
looking among stones
from the cairn we built together.
I go to the lake searching
for stones I can choose
to build my new cairn
on the foundation of ours.
Thomas, the So-Called Doubter
Inspired many years ago by a sermon by Rev. Amy Persons Parkes
It doesn’t make sense.
It never made sense but,
I liked him, and more -
I felt complete, listening
to him, being
with him.
I didn’t like the other followers so much,
Maybe Mary and a couple of the quieter ones,
but Peter’s constant blustering and posturing,
his wild swordplay and then, after the arrest,
his noisy denials, distancing himself from the teacher,
even as he died.
He was dead. I saw that. With the women.
He bled.
The women followed his broken body;
I left.
I wandered, lost.
I walked
and walked.
My thoughts, thick and chaotic,
roiled and battered me,
but I couldn’t forget
him.
It never made ‘sense’;
there was no logic or plan but
when I was travelling with him
it felt right.
Sometimes, I even liked Peter.
After I found myself walking
toward Jerusalem again,
I remembered
I’d left my bag in the upper room.
I needed my stuff. I needed to leave.
They were still there.
I could hear them before I got up the stairs;
they sounded excited, even happy.
I could hear Peter’s voice rising about the rest,
and I was furious.
I opened the door.
They turned and all laughing and yelling:
“He’s alive! We’ve seen him.”
What idiots! I saw him die while they were hiding.
I saw the nail-marks,
the wound in his side,
his body’s release
and collapse.
I saw his blood stop.
I told them that and rushed away,
choking on their words, their joy.
I remembered his stories of being in the desert,
And went there to pray.
I remembered him, and his stories,
his tolerance of Peter and the other jostling ones.
And I still needed my bag.
On the Sabbath, I went back.
They were there again, quieter
but joyful. They
welcomed me.
My heart opened.
Then, beyond sense,
He is here.
Learning Living 