A Prayer for Sleep

Tonight O God, may He Who made the stars to shine through darkness down on man, allow the silent, vast of night to take me deep (like death) into the realm of silent providence. May secret blessings: spiritual and by my body craved rest, sustain, refresh my soul. And grant again that with Your morning, […]

O Death,

I walk the sunrise quiet pines, mid whispering winds that near beside brave silently the trembling sound: Oh death where is your sting? – The grass grows hearty—little lives nurtured in the womb of earth so shortly short, now green, now brown Oh death, is this your sting? – Droplets mist the eyes of day […]

The Conqueror

Hatred cast its eyes on Him— scheming minds of threatened men, armed with lies and aimed to kill. (Anything for glory!) They led Him like a thief to trial, bound Him like a lamb for slaughter. He bowed His head and bent His knee but not to them. The devil, man, and death together mocked […]

Three Days

I. Death loomed large the great triumphant and eagerly its maw opened up for Jesus. II. Death slept well in silent sureness snoring sound on bones three days since eating Jesus. III. Death woke shocked, a guard embarrassed snapped like iron bars. Jesus walked away…triumphant. – – – Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

The Arm of the LORD

Take heart, dear souls, you exiles of the Fall and banished from God’s presence by your sins! The Lord has stretched out His almighty arm— salvation’s Word resounding from the throne, declared in muted tones for human ears, His spitting image put to fragile flesh. The Son has taken up the Father’s will and borne […]

To Ana

Ana, Your grave lies small beside the grass, which short–I hear the sound of mowers still rises higher than the marbled flat within the ground. This place we laid you: never once to see the sun, or the brown and dying blades of life. But now the grass is green again and now the sun […]

The Gift of Grief

And maybe (somehow), off where grief will give loss becomes a better way to live

Morning Loss

Green umbrella by the ocean shifted into sifting sand— little grains of crystalled rock-dust blowing toward the endless blue. – She shifts and lays aside her novel, blue as water far away where the wave line meets the sky wall like eternal, bright and fey. – Up above, the halcyon sky shine scatters light; a […]

Mary’s Memoriam

Broken like a casket box– then waves of sudden cold puddle on the head and hair dripping off the beard. Overpowering all else an earthen, floral note– extravagant, and rich embarrassment of eager zeal. – Lasting for a moment–just the ostentatious show outpoured, and used and sudden–gone. a year of lavished work. Just so–the trail […]

Close of Day

They came at close of Sabbath day. Two solitary figures, they just as the sun had set. Where once it threw its blazing life light into view the sky around; before the orange gild had died away into the silent death and gray of night. And rested there, some place deep in earth, where it […]