A Long Perspective

Tag: poem

  • A Church Burns

    100th Anniversary House (231 of 370)We gather before the burned-out building

    our aged container of our times

    together in prayer, sermon, song

    both in joy and in sorrow.

     

    We have gathered here for years,

    over generations, taught our children,

    shared hot-cross buns, coffee, tea,

    shed tears as a praying congregation

    lighting a candle for the sick, the bereaved,

    given thanks together.

     

    We are a singing congregation,

    we love the organ’s melodies;

    we stand to sing the Hallelujah Chorus

    filling the rafters with praise.

     

    Though the holes in the floor gape

    though the hallways smell of smoke

    though the pews are pushed askew,

    the church is the energy of its people

    the spirit of God lifting us up,

    the house of God.

     

    We will walk from our building

    to a new gathering place

    and when the time is ripe,

    we will return in song, celebrate new beginnings

    and the joy of being together.

    We are the church.

     

    FEWalls March 31, 2016

    (My little church in Ballard burned on Tuesday, March 29, 2016.)

  • Sr. Antoinette at the Monastery

    Paris Two 2010 183Now is her quiet season

    all the contemplation

    a meditation within

    all turned inward, a divina lectio.

     

    She said, everything we do

    must be spiritual, bloom with intention,

    a deepening of the spirit, the

    singing of the psalms, the reading of

    the scripture, so that when work

    ceases, the nurturing continues,

    ripening in the secret crevices of the soul.

    A plant deepens its roots

    develops the tiny buds that will

    bloom later. So you, too,

    in that hour, come

    into yourself.

     

    I will write you a note,

    slip it under your closed door, certain

    that your hand will grasp it, your

    eyes will read it, your heart will keep

    me in the prayerful spaces of your being

    until our hands clasp again

    and then, oh yes,

    what rejoicing!

     

    FEWalls

  • At the Nursing Home

    Paris Two 2010 055As I walk in,

    a woman straightens the chair on the patio outside her room.

    Her Easter lily, parched, sits untended, one bloom left.

    As I pass she says, I’m nuts, and blows me kisses,

    her fingers touching her lips and the empty space between us.

     

    One aide plays “string the pearls” with five women,

    then plays “follow the leader”

    and leads them off for rest time.

    Each woman has a place at the table

    and a room of her own.

     

    In one room, ceramic dolls

    in elegant kimonos bow

    in a silent dance.

     

    Into Louise’s room walks a stranger

    saying, where’s my false teeth,”

    sure she left them here.

     

    The rhodies by Louise’s window

    at the peak of their exuberance

    bloom red and sturdy, as if

    they will never droop

    or leave the walkway carpeted with softness.

     

    An aide comes to her room,

    hands white with rubber gloves.

    She puts her arm around Louise,

    turns her away from me, and chats about the weather

    as I slip away.

     

    I was never there.

     

    FEWalls

  • For Encouragement

    IMG_0365I send you my daughter

    who could not be

    her body magical as fog

    rising in wisps among the grasses

    playing dress-up

    laughing

    wrapping herself in parachute silk

    dancing free

    in the hills of cedar

     

    FEWalls

  • The Folly

    IMG_5591If I were young in Wales,

    and studying Chaucer in Swansea with students

    from Llanelli or Carmarthen or Merthyr Tydfil,

    I would hear the cleaning woman who chatted as she worked near

    my room that overlooked the gardens not the Bay.

    She would say, arms outstretched,

    “Open your arms wide to life,

    take it all in, right now,

    nothing between you and life,”

    then she would hug me breast to breast.

     

    If I were young and in Wales,

    I would go to the gardens

    my student’s black gown worn over my clothes,

    climb the tower, a “folly,” twenty steps up to nowhere

    going round and round to the pinnacle and

    stand among the tree tops and pink rhododendrons.

    On my perch, in my American accent,

    I would shout to the students

    strolling in the gardens after dinner

    (after we prayed in Latin at high table),

    “Open your arms wide to life,

    do you hear me,

    you bloody, swotting fools?”

     

    FEWalls