Swapping Orbs

The year will end in shards of shining glass— the days of life now known, now longed, now lived; the crystal balls once full and promising now gone; the good and bad spilled out along the ground. And even as the final, shining sphere is dropped our hands are stretching, surging for the new. For […]

Morning Mercies

What have I Lord, but what Your grace has freely blessed to me? This patch of sunshine earth that spins, hurtling through space, the slowly dawning mind fuzz warmth of waking with the light, the crunch of buttered toast, the yolky run of breakfast eggs, the multi-swirl of colored leaves, the tingling sting of fall. […]

All of You

Unto the word of God, my heart at last was moved. Before Your holy face, at length I knew my sin. I cried out to the Lord, released the crimes I loved. Your holy grace, like rain, has washed me pure within. – CHORUS Your work alone! And nothing that I do, before Your throne, […]

Do Not Go Raging Into That Bright Day

While I can never claim to equal Dylan Thomas’s powerful poem, I have long felt there should be a Christian counter to it. This, then, is my answer to “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” – Do not to raging into that bright day, for death will collapse and burn at close of […]

Mountain Trails

The path forks off and goes another way, nor you nor I know where the trail will trend. It leads up high into the misty grey. – And full of ardor, friends line up to say that they will join our journey to ascend the path that forks and goes another way. – But curving […]

The Gift of Life

God gives life in moments, Tiny, glass globes Placed into our hands. Don’t let them fall And shatter on the ground. Don’t throw the ugly ones away. Don’t grip the nice ones Till they break. Catch them. Kiss them. And let them go.

Interrupted Elegy

Bald the hill, and bare and raw the hearts and eyes that watched and wept. Empty now, and tramped and trod the dirt dishonored by our feet. A crying sky, and streams and screams and murmured thunder of remorse. Barren now, the wooden stakes crossed in sorrow, stained with loss. — But he was good, […]

Sunrise

The same wind blows the smell of burning ashes back to the dead, back to the stones. – Busy, crawling worker ants and constant spider, spinning out the web, Dreary, shadowed by the tomb— shadow of death. – An aging man sits praying in a coat, More slender than a stem of frozen ice with grief […]

Heaven

Floating light-clad pillars gleam and deck the stately splendor of the hall. Beams of whiteness, shafts of snow. Highways of life. – Crystal voices echoing in force, more elegant than stems of frozen glass, but big; like waves and crashing foam and surf re-echo through and ’round and in the halls. – Allelujahs! Tongues and […]