karoline strickland
For a third year I’ll be joining Ruminate Magazine’s Happenings and writing live, spontaneous short prose or poetry based on the inspiration YOU provide. Find out more here and sign up with the contributor of your choice. Then tune in between March 6-13 and enjoy watching art happen! (Note that all times are PST.)
The picture outside my window isn’t really a picture at all –
it’s in perpetual movement,
a livestream of trees.
If you tried to chart each leaf and the tiny journey it’s taking every moment
you would find it willful as a cloudland droplet –
each orbiting its tiny anchor with all its capering neighbors, madcap as a toddler on Christmas morning
while the squirrels run down and the birds fly up.
Meantime the deep roots reach and harrow deep
and think and plan ahead, quiet and provident, unalarmed parents of a million whirligig children.
Photo by David Vig on Unsplash
________
This morning, lying in bed watching the window seemed like the right thing to do to mark 40 weeks and my due date. Due dates are rarely birth days, but parents remember them almost as well! – and I thought – “When I remember this day, I’ll enjoy remembering the extra thirty minutes watching the trees in the morning sunlight.” Since my daughters were harmoniously making their own breakfast, I did it.
Half-drowned in fogs
I hear their call –
“Mama!” – the hoarse, insistent cry
– “Mama!” – beyond the bedroom wall.
Crawling the length
of wrinkled sheets
I sit, propped on an aching hand
and strain my ears to hear – just geese –
arrowing northward
overhead.
Uncalled, I turn; work sleepily
back into warmth and the rumpled bed.
Yet after all –
why not? Does now
the world live motherless, unlike
its opening days? Then how
was she, bone-made,
first named
and – surely not with careless word –
mother of all that lives proclaimed?
October 31, 2020
Photo by Ian Cumming on Unsplash
For your young life we must withdraw a while
from all our usual gatherings; must smile
through windows, wave from porches, speak through screens;
and immured, remote, prepare as if for trial.
Trial not legal, nor of warfare feared;
trial not of love or loyalty volunteered;
trial not imposed by sin or shame; but trial
for health, confidence of screenings cleared.
So fast from voices, fast from faces, fast from
new, and old, and known; so fast from humdrum
needful outings; friendly hands, familial hugs;
so fast before this newest life is come.
Thus priests and kings, knights-errant, acolytes
have done for centuries. Christ, on the heights
of all the earth looked down and – fasting – cried
“The Lord my God I worship! not these sights.”
Awake! Uncurl, my little one! Advent
to us when we have wrestled! when we assent
whole-hearted to this fast. Then unto us
let new life come! Hushed – till then – we wait expectant.
“How are you today?” you ask.
“Feeling” – I say – “the sadness of my flesh.
Heavy today as concrete blocks.
It’s sand on my eyelids. It’s holes in my heart.
It’s bones weighed down
and muscles mashed.
It’s an emptied throat and hollowed words.
It’s feet that never move.”
Not that I say this.
Not really.
“All right,” I say.
“Okay,” I say.
“Keeping on,” I say.
As is necessary.
For pain, like beauty, wears a veil.
Clothes hide skin from all but one fit worshiper
as words and songs our inmost hearts.
And you shall be like a
well-watered garden.
Like a spring of water,
a spring whose waters do not fail.
over sundown psalms of mourning doves
“When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and” –
fiddling wings of mating crickets
“he exhorted them all”
a fall of catkins from post oak trees
“to remain faithful
to the Lord
with steadfast purpose”
ants nose around us on their way home
Clear glasses
curving
rounded
smooth
Memory
Turkey
spices
prayers
Hands
bright flowers
rugs in streets
Washing
alone
What story did you see?
A brief post to let you know that for the second year in a row, I’ll be joining Ruminate Magazine’s Happenings to create live, online, in front of an audience.
This is a multi-day event taking place May 19-23rd. I’ll be writing live on Ruminate’s Facebook page on Friday, May 22 at 11:00 am EDT. Visit the event page to see all of the brave creators and purchase a ticket. You can have something made just for you – poetry, music, art, flash-fiction, or lyric essays – based on prompts and inspiration you provide for the artist.
Hope to see you there!
P.S. You can find my flash fiction story “The Angel of Ashley Place” in Issue 42 of Ruminate Magazine, which happens to be the issue pictured below.
A tough red fellow
swaggering on the fence –
he scolded me
in his grandiose offense
while he hopped and he fluttered
and signaled the commence
of hostilities between us
if I refused obedience.
Made Along The Way 