Places 04: Fog
Wandering through young trees / at ease in this wet woods / my footsteps fade / deep into duff. The air has substance…
Places 03: Patterns Change
steady west winds / breathe hot over grasses / on roasting ground / greens dry to gold, golds fade to brown / clouds cast warm…
Places 02: Geraniums
Geraniums, against all outside snow / Coral lights within my room / Reaching toward the windows white / In winter bright…
Places 01: Snow
This poem, Snow, is about delay, risk and choices inside of changing circumstances—and, though not spoken, about aging.
Places 08: Touch
I Wide and warm and open, the hands of spring drop rain, soften down our frozen ground, courses cut cross gravel roads, fields and hills and streams erode. Waters push away at loosening soils, wash small stones and softened clay from roots too weak to cling. Soakings squish beneath our feet, imprints pool and overflow […]
Places 07: Conversation
For those who like to compare revisions and see how poems grow, I’ve included several versions of Conversation. The last two are significantly better than the first, so keep reading. 2011, Conversation, original published in Places, 2011 Wanting living conversation a word lifted out into time’s tick-tock, Into creche and crush of creation. Human […]
Places 06: Friends
Writing can be a break from pressures—like reading a good book or watching a light movie. Revising this autobiographical poem about my first date in 1952 was a pleasant faith-building diversion from pressures and stress. I hope you can travel back in time and relate to bits of it with me. The line lengths support reading aloud. The meaning? Honestly, I’m not sure—
Words to Abide in
This morning, I reached for my Bible and opened to John 14. I stopped reading at John 15:7, where Jesus says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you.”
I wanted that. I wanted it enough to stop and ask, “What must I do to get it?”
Cross Cultural Divides
The women in Jane Austin’s books fascinate me. Especially when they are blinded by their own faulty judgments and opinions. I identify with those who eventually see their mistakes and change their minds—and hearts.
A Morning Prayer
Note: Back in September, the morning I wrote this, a dear friend read it and said, “I love it. Publish it.” It was the last post my friend was well enough to read. Lord, I’m full of self and sleep—and want another ten minutes in bed. I need You to wake me up to Your loving power. […]
Teapots
Last Thursday I counted my teapots. I have fourteen of them. I don’t collect them; they come to me. The occasion for counting up was a new addition to the inventory . . .It was one of the noisiest look-at-me teapots I’ve ever seen in my life. It called out, “Embrace my imperfections.”
Essays in Ephesians #16
. . . in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Ephesians 2: 21-22 Israel had known God’s glory— through centuries of sporadic yet repeated divine-human interaction through their kings […]
