Tag Archives: Catholic poetry

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.

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.

 

Nature

My soul must be crooked –
not curved – I mean. It must
have angles and open boxes,
not fissures, cracks, or splits,
but myriad unclosed cubes.

For as round as my universe is,
for all the atmosphere and vaporous aura,
for the spheres of planets and bright balls of gas
shining around my sky, my soul must have
corners.

My windows fit into hollow columns
in which they are slid up and down.
The columns allow for crevices on the sill
and there collect all the bits of ground and air
thrown at the house as it stands in the weather.

Over the years the dirty stuff turns to muck
and the muck hardens. So I soften it with water
and wipe out the black soil, brown pine needles,
white-ish bird droppings and iridescent fly carcasses,
flinging it all into the yard below.

This is stubborn work. I use a thick, strong knife,
and soft cotton swabs, and yet some triangles
of muck remain. The clean sill shines and looks like
beginning. The tiny corners look
suspicious.

There is a smooth, curvaceous love
inside my soul. Yet, it lives within
some flat walls, a free-will-construction
I don’t quite understand,
and even though I let
Christ’s waterfall
pour and power out
the muck,
and even though I shine
a new beginning,
and even though I take
knife
and
swab,
water
and
rag,
my corners
collect the muck
that divides,
and traps.

I know that smooth curvaceous love
is Christ’s. I must listen for it. Ask him to fill in my
corners, to round me out, make my soul spherical,
like the innumerable cellular structures of my body,
like the ever-advancing curve of time and space,

let my unclosed cubes take on
the elliptical pathways of planets,
protecting love from my mired,
messy corners, letting love sail
beyond my edges

and swoop back,
giving and receiving
in a bolstered, mysterious
free-will-construction
I will some day understand.

“Confession is a beautiful act of great love.   Only in confession can we go in as sinners with sin and come out as sinners without sin.” ~ Blessed Teresa of Calcutta