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.

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

Newmade

Wrapped in my womb and under my heart I took you outside tonight
to let the stars shine on you.

I breathed green night air and I stepped on green wings
and I let the stars shine on you.

I walked past the horn of a crescent moon and the sharp blue eyes of the sky
to let the stars shine on you.

I wondered your name and I strained my heart –

– to hear –

– perhaps –

your newmade soul –

and I let the stars shine on you.

Footfall

I’ve mapped my body, just like you,
I’ve settled where my thoughts are (in my brain, of course).

But when I walk alone my thoughts appear, arise, and open with my footfalls

DeathtoStock_QuietFrontier-04.jpg

as if that’s where they wait for me,

underneath

collected

on the soles of my feet.