Songs of the Spirit

If I could see your face

I would hold onto it

In my memory

Forever.

You formed me before

I had awareness.

Before I knew it was you

Who held me.

You sent me out beyond

My ability to remember

And asked me

To seek you.

Love pierced the barrier

Between then and now.

But love did not come

With seeing.

So I grasp darkly

For a picture

That will enable me

To know you.

And I listen

For your words

Sent through time

To call me.

Slower Than Ordinary Time

What comes after the sudden stop

when reality and desire collide?

When your prayers are unanswered

and your heart feels like stone?

When the breath has been drawn from your lungs

and your limbs have turned to water.

When no path is seen, no answers come.

No blessings fall, no streams refresh.

Time has sped up.

Time has slowed down,

caught in the mire of dismay.

All is not well with the world.

Stephen was stoned.

Jesus was crucified.

And death still ravages life.

SLOW POKE

My brain has always moved at lightening speed, leaping and bounding ahead of rational thought while my body lagged sadly behind, moving in fits and starts. This has been tricky but I have learned to live with it. In any moving group, I will be the straggler at the end. Meanwhile my brain will have climbed a dozen mountains, scaled to the tops of stately pine trees and flown across the skies with swirling masses of cloud form. In my current metamorphous, both body and mind have slowed down with my body becoming downright sluggish. This seems to be annoying to everyone around me as they trip past me, try to squeeze me out of the way and sometimes rudely bump into me. I don’t relish being a hindrance to other life forms but it seems to have come to that. I would love to fly gracefully through my day, never fumbling for charge cards, money or tickets. But that is not to be my lot and I must endure the body that has been assigned to me. Yet how glorious it is when someone smiles at me or waits for me or tries to help. I wish I had learned earlier in life to be kinder to the strangers you meet every day.

SUMMER CHAIRS

Summer chairs puddle with rain.

Pots overflowing, drowning.

Stiff straws of grass, stubbornly

brown, turn their backs to redemption.

Daisy and Phlox bow gratefully,

a Monet of cerulean and maize

dripping their scents on

saturated soil.

Although watched faithfully in

it’s first few phases,

the full moon will go unseen tonight.

Maurading mists, turbulent torrents

Rushing, raging, roaring--

circling north and east--

change our view of the world.

THE OLD LADY IN THE MIRROR

No matter how much time I spend on my face, my hair, my clothes, the same tired old lady looks back at me from the mirror. It's always a shock because it's still ME inside and I don't know who that stranger is. At some point in life your body becomes your enemy. It betrays and diminishes you. It intimidates and disheartens you. It refuses to perform it's usual tasks with it's usual grace. It rebels, it stalls, it shuts you down. It hammers your joints and weakens your senses. Age is an indignity and rife with booby traps. Age aggravates more body parts than you ever knew you had. As Bette Davis once said, "old age ain't for sissies."

In Favor of a Flat Earth

A flat earth would be quite comfortable to live in. Picture gardens, lakes, ponds, pathways, wandering sheep, rice paddies. Trees would be okay as long as they weren’t too large - no giant Sequoias that might upset the balance and cause the earth to tilt. No huge oceans with giant waves to bring harm and destruction or to get lost in. Hills and mountains, especially high jagged peaks would add interest but would also complicate things: they would have to be climbed, they could perhaps be hidden in, and they cast huge shadows. There is serenity in sameness. A flat earth would be quite safe and comforting. But then someone would probably come along and tell us that not only is the earth round, it spins and orbits! What a dizzying thought!

Family

It's such a warm sunny feeling being with family. I try to retain a visual image of such moments over the years. If I work at it, I can even add a sound track and the feeling of love and contentment that went with it. I would like it to happen more often, but maybe then I wouldn't appreciate it quite so much. I seem to have to readjust every so often to the ages of everyone. Especially the younger ones. Just as you get to know them as toddlers, they become teen-agers

and then adults. At each stage along the way, it's like getting to know a whole new person. But so far, I've loved every one of them at each and every stage.