Category Archives: Poems

Even More

A wise friend has said,
“Yoga is a fine fuel;”
it keeps us going,
sometimes for ages,
past our last practice.
Indeed, it is the repetition
of the little movements
and breaths of our days
that come back to us
when we’ve nothing left to give –
it is the cardinal’s red flash across
our back-porch window,
his flitting between the forsythia branches;
it is the plethora of our little boy’s
generous hugging, his loving squeeze
when we are happy, sad, angry, tired;
it is the unwavering “I love you” of our two-year-old,
the immediate “it’s ok” of our four-year-old;
the surprising “thanks for having me”of our nine-year-old.

All these things come back to us –
our hard work moving and breathing on the mat,
our constant glances through the window,
our cuddling through the night,
our speaking love through the day,
our effortful forgiveness at all hours,
our creation of enjoyable experiences –
and we are given
freedom of movement,
glimpses of beauty,
comforting touch,
words of love, forgiveness, gratitude.

But even more than all of this,
Divinity comes to us without
our effort –
for God loves us first
God chases us always
God never turns away
God always waits.

God in infinite humility
comes to us in person,
in Christ, in a Spirit
that reaches into our own
without our needing to lift a finger of effort

but to say “Yes.”

Sometimes saying yes
feels like mountain-moving.

Thank God he is God.
Thank God he is even more
All-Loving than I can understand.

in a backyard surrounded by sky.

Our little guy
points and speaks
and points and speaks,
repeats his sisters’: “stop-it!”
and his brother’s: “oh, man!”
my: “enough!”
and his daddy’s: “…love you…”

Outside I hold him
sweet and squishy on my hip,
he points in the air over my shoulder
“Sky, sky.”
I nod my head, “Sky.”
He points in the air over my other shoulder
“Sky!”
“Sky! I say.
He points straight up
and we look into the air together
calling out, “Sky!”

He wraps squishy arms around my neck,
his sweet cheek brushes against mine
before he rests his head on my shoulder.
We squeeze each other awhile before
plopping down into the grass
in a backyard surrounded by sky.

Hidden behind thick, deep green magnolia leaves,

“Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?” ~Matthew 6:26

Hidden behind thick, deep green magnolia leaves, (Extreme Endeavor)

Hidden behind thick, deep green magnolia leaves,
tucked between branching limbs,
she sits, her coral-colored tail peeping
over the woody edge of her nest.

We have been talking of them for days, our cardinals;
his bright coat a beacon that draws our eye;
we halt in our collecting, sorting, sweeping
and watch him dive into the forsythia

emerging with the perfect twig, and she,
orange-beaked, reaching through the chain-linked fence
for the tiny fruits of our neighbor’s wild-berry bush;
the two fly from branch to bush to berry over and again

and finally we venture beneath the tree;
we peer upward, into the canopy of tangled limbs
just barely able to spy the wooden bowl;
we whisper in our minds, how many?

let’s not scare her, we agree, sneaking out
of the shade and back toward the porch.
How, I wonder, have these two mates
chosen our boisterous backyard

for such an extreme endeavor as this?
So close above our heads, above the commotion
of swings and slides, screams and screeches,
squirt guns and swimming pool.

How, even, have we come to be here,
nestled into this rise, this slope of earth,
cozied into this miniature fortress
of brick and mortar?

We are part of the extreme endeavor,
the searching, gathering, building,
foraging, feeding, guiding,
teaching, pulling, and pushing

work of love and forgiveness,
kingdom-seeking and righteousness,
giving and accepting,
asking and receiving.