Currently Browsing: Poetry

Prayer of Pursuit

Jesus, Redemption, Redeemer—   in You is my everything.   My failures defeated, my sin forgiven. My fears calmed, my weakness strengthened.   My deaths turned into resurrection— new beginnings, new dreams, new life.   Stir my heart, Lord Jesus, to pursue You more deeply more faithfully more passionately. I long to meet with You in the mornings and hear Your voice clearly, my heart spilling with praise.   I long to worship You in the evenings, refreshed with Your truth, closing my day with peace and prayer.   Help me see all around me Your invitations to relationship, to...
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Hometown

brown oak leaves finger the slender grass, deep with memory   poplar leaves in varying shades of ochre pile calf- and ankle- deep over the terraced deck   the pointed red stars of Japanese maples plaster the sidewalks like confetti after a parade   old trees—sycamore, maple, cherry and apple—   arching over creeks and country roads, marching up and down the hills, strip in the breeze, holding onto both gold and pennies, sifting their treasure in measured sums   my hometown in autumn counts the years one leaf at a time— meted memories, dropped tokens of every forgotten summer...
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New Year’s Day

I miss the glass stars we hung in the kitchen window at Christmas time,   blue, orange, red, the big one in the middle with the candle.   Light of the old year gone, candlewick spent. Decorations and ornaments put away the last few days of December   stripping the old year bare, back to its unadorned state. The holidays are like dresses, fancy, glamorous, long and covering. Fireworks that illumine what—the year going or the one coming?   We won’t know until this December 31, when the same window stars have come and gone once more   and this year’s white wax is spent.  ...
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Spring

It is a quiet overcast Sunday. Daffodils roll up their sleeves. Grass makes room for the dandelions. A silent green and yellow parade of acknowledgement. Look closer if you don’t believe in redemption. White blooms on the pear trees die for young leaves. The blossoms are new every year, no matter how old the branches are. Daffodils reveal their orange smiles, periscopes of life.    
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Dusk

There are different kinds of crying. There is the terror of dusk, the sun’s acquiescence to closing darkness, the starkness of the emptied trees in silhouette as it goes, second by second, deeper into the unknown. There is that relief, and that hollowness, and that awareness, that puncture of sudden comprehension, when the sun finally finishes its descent, when the blackness settles in and you can bear it no longer, when you have no choice but to turn your face the other way and wait for the dawn.  ...
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