Poetry
Poetry
Spring Clearing
Sometimes I survey the
Hill below my window,
Seeing winter's carnage
Now exposed by spring.
The ice withdraws,
Exposing torn and broken limbs,
Piles of debris,
Crushed and flattened
By the weight of winter storms.
So ruined, dead,
And flat,
Marked more by loss
Than early springtime's
Gain.
Yet when I shift
Those battered limbs and
Crumbling remnants of
Last autumn's brightness
I find new life beneath,
A touch of bright viridian,
Leaves beginning to curl
With life again.
So I look within for such
Small promises of life
In my own
Storm-numbed soul.
It seems far too long
I have counted loss.
Dead and falled limbs
Litter the landscape
Of my mind.
It's time to gather those
Dead branches upon the hill.
Time to gather
And pile them for burning,
An offering consecrated
To Your care.
Time to clear the litter
Of past seasons' pain,
To shift those withered memories
And nurture shoots of life
Just beginning to stir again.
O, tend them gently,
Careful to protect from
Thoughtless crushing,
And untimely frost.
Hinder not their brave
But tender start.
© Marcia L. Gentry
From a conversation
concerning depression with
Mary, the Mother of Jesus,
who made her presence known during a shopping trip to the garment district
in Los Angeles in
late March of 1994.
Sackcloth was
what my father wore,
spun from shame,
loomed in rage,
sewn in sorrow.
The only clothes that fit him well.
Ancestral garments of mourning,
handed down, patched,
threadbare, through generations.
Like his father before him,
he wept for the suffering
and the death of Jesus
[whom he had spat upon and crucified].
Hungering for the peculiar blessings
promised to those who mourn,
he daily finished out
the sufferings of Christ.
Sackcloth was what my father wore.
Gethsemane his adopted home.
I was swaddled in sackcloth.
I lay still against its harshness.
Accustomed from birth
to the textures of death.
I did nothing that would have been
unseemly in funereal garb.
The cloth of mourning hung
lifeless about my body
shrouding the simplest
pleasures of life.
Gethsemane is not, however, my adopted home.
I refuse to live there.
I will no longer be clothed
in the grief of generations.
No matter who has died.
[I mean no disrespect]
But I will wear
sackcloth no longer.
Not even at funerals.
I don't really know
what to wear.
Cowboy boots or golf shoes?
Gortex and flannel?
Silk and nylon?
Do you have anything in Spandex?
All seem more graced than sackcloth in their own way.
But none fit me well.
For I am yet a child.
Swaddle me, Mother of Jesus.
Spin in grace.
Loom in love.
Sew in joy.
Clothe me like the infant Jesus
in the same clothes that
all the other kids wear.
Swaddle me in graced clothing
cut in love from ordinary life
that I might share in the simple joys
which Jesus knew.
Anonymous
© NACR
Desperate Prayer
A
single
silent
scream
launches
with
sudden
violence
from
my
inner
depths
and
rockets
toward
the
distant
steel
blue
sky
and
for
just
an
instant
I can
see
white
jet stream
forming
a
vapor
link
between
my stricken
heart
and
God.
© Juanita Ryan
Are You Having Fun Yet?
( a codependent's lament )
Have some fun, you say?
Oh no!
Oh me!
I couldn't possibly. . .
You see. . .
I don't know how.
I can't right now!
My neighbor needs to talk.
My dog is barking for his walk.
Me!. . .Have some fun? . . .
When my recovery's in stage 1?
Besides. . .
My daughter has a splinter in her toe.
She wouldn't like it if I left, you know!
And my boys, they may have mumps,
And my husband's in the dumps.
And even if everything were fine,
I really wouldn't have the time.
The chores are not all done
World peace has not been won.
I've lost my seventh pair of keys.
It's not a perfect 86 degrees.
The kitchen counter's full of ants.
I really don't have a chance.
Maybe someday
If and when
I'll try this "fun thing"
Maybe then.
© Pam Eastburg
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my life by: megan 2-12-2006
poem by pam eastburg by: mary walsh 11-1-2004 read carefully by: alyssa 10-28-2004 |