The Gift of Encouragement

April 22, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 11 Comments

The Gift

When you stirred a life up with your words
Peeled the layers of your past
Pared the skin, tough and bitter
Chopped the pieces into bite-sized
And pounded poems on paper
You gave a gift to me.
While you were writing
You let us feast on parts of living
The ones that live in poetry
They sit bitter sweet on lips of telling
But the white page holds such sweet redemption
Memories, hold the healing.
You carve, with gentle fingertips, the moments of your youth.
As you use your hands, your words for tender telling,
The ones that loved us all along.

And now the gift will live forever.
Oh the power of words,
Yours.
The love of them, you passed,
That now are mine,
Ours.

Know now how lovely are your words.

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Dedicated to my mother on her birthday, April 22, 2013.

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Joining Laura at Laura Boggess dot com

A Perfect State Of In Between

April 20, 2013April 25, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

A Perfect State Of In Between

When the door opens on the old white ice box
he peels back the Reynolds
aluminum foil, covering the prize he’s purchased
and reveals the blue guys from the sea.

We’ve been waiting for awhile, well a year
for them
and I see myself.
But don’t tell him, or anyone.

Timing is important.
Well it’s everything in fact.
And seasons come and go.
It’s their season now.
The soft shells are ready, and I am too.

I see myself in the metal pan under the foil.
In them, in this perfect state of in between.
Change made them perfect.
Life stopped for them, perfection frozen
At this time of molting.

I hear the excitement in his voice.
The eyes stare up, the pairs of beady blues
Row on row.
We know this soft shelled state.
We know it well.
And we know the seasons too, the ones of change.
Are there really any other.

And it is where we live most of our days,
In between
The shedding and the growing
The softening and release.
Gone are layers, left to float ashore.

I want to thank them for the gift.
An offering, a delicacy.
For stopping at the perfect time
And showing me the joy
that shedding brings

A perfect state of in between.

We Are Human, Siri

April 17, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 12 Comments

We Are Human, Siri

Last night Siri didn’t want to talk about God or Jesus
And my daughter asked her too about heaven and the cross
She didn’t know about Boston or pain
Or the burning desire to run and scream
Or run and hide, or just run ragged to the end of an outstretched
mirage of a horizon, legs burning lactate build up, gripping pain
So we let her off the hook and laughed
But we are still hanging by a thread
She told Siri to call her princess and to wake her up at 6:40
That’s nice
She can refer all those questions to a human and she did
She has a nice new Lilly Pulitzer case to hide in
But we are cradled in the arms of the most High while
We ache about shattered limbs
And life in a chair, but it is still life
What were we thinking
A little mother daughter chat with an android voice
When the Creator of the Universe was available and is
We are human and so there is grace

I want to run and scream like a wild one and fling and flail
Arms swinging like helicopter blades
Expending crazy mad energy
I am human and I hurt
And I am in the company of millions
But we are covered by The Creator
Each deliriously painful moment of grief and loss heard
Siri can defer the questions to a human
I, thankfully can take all of mine to Him.
Bent, weak, bowed and shaken.
Humanity runs to the cross

under a covering of love.

Siri, if you only knew such love

But the last word is always hope and His
And fear won’t strangle bold and brave
And bombs can’t rob our souls
Human kindness runs to aid
Man helps man and God loves man
Broken, fragile, wounded man
And hearts are broken but still beat
Blood runs hard and fast but so does
Compassion at the scene and in the world

Siri, if you only knew

The love of God most High

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With Jennifer today for #tellhisstory and with Emily and my team at Imperfect Prose on Thursdays