Burnt Toast

Nearly 25 years in
I decide to ask for burnt toast
Villa D’Este can wait
Napa can ripen longer
On the vine, time sweetens
And Blackberry Farm ,well
The longing after this place and that
Over the Blue RIdge Mountains and beyond
Can’t match
The burnt toast, smell it, love is in the air
Behind it there is a love story
Of trying and failing
Trying and succeeding
Routine and change
Marmalade mornings
Love  wafts in the air, the fan dispersing the stale
Ruined, never
Broken, neither
Saved by grace, always
Love lingering somewhere
Cut and scrape
The black crumbs down the drain
Make it new and lovely
Paris is perfect for lovers
And no greater Francophile lives
Than I
But for me, on my anniversary
Champagne and burnt toast
Please
Living the dream while
Going nowhere
Love carries us everywhere.

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Holes

wpid-IMG_20130814_180820.jpgOne day
We will look back on all of this
Holy mackerel
Every dog
Has his
One at a time
Daily grind
Deep breathes
In and out
One day soon, in glory
We’ll sing and shout
Without
Worry or fear
We’ll live
Around the corner
Holds a new beginning
Healing souls
Holes in the walls of my heart
Had you known then
What you did not
Know, now
How could you have
Hindsight
It’s easy for you to say
Sheltered by ignorance
Blissfully guarded
Armchair quarterbacking
You could have would have
Bought and sold stock in
Kleenex
What’s next, you
Cried you a river
Stayed way ahead of the pain curve
And in the end you
Start all over again
Mercifully
Saved by grace
Laugh lines
Replacing
Worry lines
And a  softer shade
Of grays
Holes in the knees of my jeans.

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The Vigil

come unto me

She swears the color yellow soothes a soul
So you will  find her staring at the garden
Fixed gaze on the yellowest flower there
In the yard
She guards
Her heart
Holding vigil over one who gives her labor pains
Though eighteen years have passed since birth
Holding hope for one
Who birthed her too
Traumatized by screams of pain
She is ripped in two
She finds the field of yellow calms her nerves
Between her shifting gaze she lays it down
And takes it up again, her sinful self desires to stir the pot
She rakes the coals, red hot
Searing
Bloody
Mad when stirred
Hotter when  she pokes the fire
Fear finds fuel in oxygen of snuffed out hope
So she’ll return to yellow on her color wheel
Where quiet and calm soothe her aching soul
Now she knows how He must feel
Father of a million times a million times a million, no more
And lover of as many souls
She will pick a single yellow stem
And give it all to Him
The Perfecter of Her Faith
The One Who Never Sleeps Nor Rests
She lays the flower down
She’ll rest
Reciting: Goldfinch, Monarch, Black-eyed Susans
Over in her dreams
Calmed by yellow memories and hum
It is well with my soul
For He has got her back, cradled in His arms
She wears the title
Mother, Daughter, but
No longer
Tender of a  flame that burns
Her heart consumed by fear.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Joining Jennifer Dukes Lee for #tellhisstory

Did You Ever Dream

Spencer and the dolphin

Did you every dream of
Strapping on your custom-made wings
Made of gathered and lovely found things
Buckling a harness
Of hope
Tightening the tether to the sky
And soaring away for a very short stay
Sent off by the caw caw caw
Of  an army of annoying black crows

Into the cloud covered day
As you glide down the bend in the arcs
Where the earth melds with blue hued sky
While you whisper a million whys

Landing, a soft crash landing
Mercy breaking your fall
You stand to face the day

This little part of your dream
Occurrs

Right after you toss Adam and Eve under the bus
For causing all of the pain
In the first place
For all of us
They started this cycle of pain
And it is so easy to blame
Eve and Adam
For all the sadness
Jesus I am so glad You came

Here
To a world of hurt
Where sin covers us up like
Dirt

And you reach for the plank in your eye
And ask why oh God oh why

Well neither have I.