Tag Archives: family life

A Prayer for Right-Seeing

There are times
it requires the entire will,
every muscle fiber, each heart-string,
to see those squashed banana pieces as jewels,
the bread crumbs as confetti,
the demands as opportunities for love.

There are times
I feel the heart reaching, insisting, pulling
on the harness of right-seeing, yoking
these phyical moments to the ever-lasting instant.

So when the dark douses my light
and plunging, sinking, drowning pride
brings its crooked despair,

breathe for me
and turn my eyes to the sky,
let the water recede
and the salt dry up the pity.

There are times
I feel the heart reaching, insisting, pulling
on the harness of right-seeing, yoking
these physical moments to the ever-lasting instant.

Remind me my image is yours.
I am made for the unconditionality of love,
the humility of Christ.

Turning

Spaghetti squash lies in the October garden
beneath butter-yellow flowering broccoli.
Bees still visit, bright-stripped and fuzzy,
while cabbage white butterflies float over stem and stalk.

The earth waits to be turned,
the garlic cloves to be buried,
the leaves to be gathered, scattered and spread.
Our unpruned forsythia holds a bough of apple-red leaves proudly above the ground.

The night air has us under blankets now,
and we stretch, move, and breathe slowly in the dark mornings.
In this earthly life we grow and ripen, huddle and hibernate, take root and flourish,
turning, and turning, and turning toward the light.

An Ode on the Eve of Our Anniversary

Today’s clouds sit in the sky, scoops of ice cream
on glass tables.  On a tiny mountain top
we let our feast rest warm in our bellies, watch
our kids run wild

through the prairie grass.  The trees’ journey toward
winter deepens, leaves like flames flare along the
horizon, flash out of the dense green skyline.
Our season, shifting

within this sphere of space and time, we measure
love in actions; we count our growth rings on the
circumferences of memories.  We are
stories, closed curves combined.