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 […]

The Homecoming of Johnny McLeod

Pounding down the dusty trail, far up and off away, pounding toward McLeod place. Johnny comes home today. – A year ago, the snow still clumped in mounds of melting gray. A year ago he’d worn his sword— but now he comes home—to stay. – She hardly remembered the smell of his beard. She’d kissed […]

Thanksgiving: Pain

Father, thank You for the pain— a gentle honesty that holds the body in useless stillness to say, Any strength we have is given. Father, thank You for the sorrow— an earnest loyalty that rends the heart with throbbing losses to say, The only home we have is Heaven. –

Take the Lamp

It seems a cold, dark shaft where love would bid me go— deep beneath the hills. The memories, sand-like, blow— a heart-blinding draft. I’ve walked the caves before— walked them with a thief until the stars were gone; I know the haunting grief— and I cannot anymore. But I forget that love, with […]

Mary’s Tears

The night has taken Israel and drawn its blackness across the world like a shroud. The dark has bound us like our hopes, sealed up in a tomb. Does the God of Israel sleep? Does the LORD forget His people? A mother cannot sleep. A mother cannot forget her child. I have rocked him in […]

God Paints

God paints the world with colored strokes, with emerald and vermilion; with asteroid bursts and nebulae; with textured tapestries of plants, with vine-twined veins of chlorophyll; the thump and throb of pumping life. – God paints the world with colored strokes with onyx stones and coal dust; with dusky shade from cypress trees; with layered […]

Song of the Bereaved

The night is done— Our time When the sun rises on the sea And the smell of brine Draws you and me Out on the sand to run. Today we cannot run— Your night is done, And it is only me Here in our time, Watching the foaming brine As the sun rises on […]