Lying Late in Bed on Monday Morning

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.

The World Calls Me Mother

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

Outdoor Worship

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

Ruminate Happenings

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.

Spontaneous Prose! Writing with Ruminate Magazine

Today I’m interrupting my usual post schedule (though I’ll still keep it short!) to share that I will be joining Ruminate Magazine’s 50 Hours event, and creating live on Facebook!

During the week of February 25, visual artists, poets, and short prose writers will be creating spontaneous art in 10 minute segments. Sign up and pick a topic, an image, a feeling, a memory, and have an original art piece made just for you (to keep).

This is a wonderful and exciting way to share in the making, giving, and receiving of art!

I’ll be writing on February 27, 7 pm EST. Read more here and purchase a ticket!

Ruminate Happenings Photo