Surroundings

If depression were a flavor, it would taste like a glass of water.

Colorless and tasteless.
You could drink a bellyful and still be hungry.

If loneliness were a smell, it would smell like sunshine.
You could wake up on a beautiful summer day and inhale deeply,
  but never smell it's warmth.

If doubt were a sound it would sound the the echo of a footfall
 at the other end of a carpeted hallway.
      Did you hear that?

  But love, like water poured on a fist closed tight,
    seeps all the way to its center.

And love, like the afternoon sun surrounding the coatless beggar,
  warms his upturned cheek and clasps his frostbit fingers.

And love, like doubt, is a mystery and a wonder.
  How do you know it has tiptoed past?


-jm

Colder than the heat of the snow

I see you laying in our bed
  and I lay in your shadow

The back side of your face a wall

  that does not break and will not fall
It's frozen in sunlight and covered in frost
   You're colder than ice but without you I'm lost

Your back is warm against my skin
   as I lay in your shadow
My lips are numb my heart's on fire
   and I burn without your aloe
I'm in flames but I'm afraid to show
  because you're colder than the heat of the snow

Drifting in sleep like the drifts of the snow
   as I lay within your shadow
I feel you breath through the sheets in our bed
I hear your sighs like a song in my head
I long for the dawn but don't want you to go
  You're the taste of the sunrise and the heat off the snow.

Belated Valentine.

 I Stutter When I Call

I falter when I talk to you
   I can't help
      can't help
  can't help it.

All I want
      I try
    I want to say
get's muted.

My mouth gets in the way
     of my heart.
         my heart --
       My heart
that speaks in threes.

I stumble
    I trip,
      I fall
  into my words
and say nothing at all.

But I love you.

And if I can just
      get
          it
       out
like an ocean fitted with a waterspout -
the torrent stays in and 3 words dribble out.

Songs of Sorrow

When you wonder if I’m there

  because I do not make a sound

            I am

  Loving you quietly in the background.

If you wonder if I know

what tears your heart in two

            I am

right here, arms outstretched for you.

If you’re asking “Do you care?”

 ( and you know I do)

           I do,

           I am

Holding you in my hand.

jm

Newly born

You gave her your breath
  the taste of a hurricane
A fragment of a gale

You gave her Your breath and she turned into a wail

You gave her Your breath
  and she was as pink as she had been pale
  her human heart beat time
Declaring "all is well

Her soul fresh from heaven
Her lungs filled by God
Her song - heavenly and human.

I lay back on my pillow ... awed.

I've been working on this poem since Charissa was born - almost 3 years ago.  Somehow I could never get it right.  There is something infinitely amazing about a soul starting an eternal journey, the first voluntary breath is a staggeringly important moment and it just flies by with all the other labor and delivery drama. My prayer for all my children is that they use their voices to sing God's praises.

5 

Thus says God the Lord,

Who created the heavens and stretched them out,

Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it,

Who gives breath to the people on it,

And spirit to those who walk on it:

6 

“I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness,

And will hold Your hand;

Isaiah 42:5,6

Before your feet hit the floor

Before your feet hit the floor

Remember when your legs and toes
   fell and rose
   fell and rose
bumping gently the edge of the seat
   in the space between the floor
                           and your feet
 - childhood hanging in midair
   shrinking underneath your chair.

Remember when you couldn't reach
   doorknobs
   light switch
 each beyond the stretching of your hand
 - a darkness in the rooms unmanned
 by the casual lifting of my hand.

Well, you grew down and you grew up
- the light and dark at your command
      and suddenly you've found
      your feet have hit the ground.

May your hands and your toes
walk in paths lit by grace
reaching for the Light of Life
your footstep on the path He traced.

-jm 9/1/13

Psalm 119:105, Proverbs 6:23

In case you wonder if I'm lucky

Phillip and I are rapidly approaching our 13th year of marriage and boy do I feel lucky.  I got very nostalgic about it a couple of nights ago when I remembered how my dad cried when I went from his arms into Phillip's.  I suppose I'm only a few years away from having to release my own children to their spouses.  Every time Eliannah dresses up in her bridal costume my heart skips a beat.


I watched a man die a bit today
  when I reached out
  but not for you
I barely saw the hand that you withdrew
  but I knew.


Caught up in my dreams
  and love
I sent out my twice sent dove
and it took to it's branch and nest
  and found a home
  and found it's rest

My heart, not driven from my home
  but given
Found a heartbreak all it's own -
  The joy of love like breaking dawn
  that rises hopefully and moves on
  and drops to rest
  and set
  and pray
to gloriously rise again each day.

The Notebook

Remember not too long ago

when I named your notebooks, lunchbox, coat?

when the sharpie wrote unbleeding

on everything from floor to ceiling?

when I brushed that hair and made that bed

and carefully chose the books we read?

This notebook pushed aside un-needed

in a bookshelf left un-weeded

is a picture of how tall you've grown

how strong you are, your mind's your own.

Childhood sheds it's coat of laughter

it's labeled toys, it's happily-ever-after

But one thing I ask - this is a must!

don't let your God grow grey with dust.

Your boyhood Savior and childhood friend

knows your begining and has no end

He named all the stars and after that, it's true,

He took out his sharpie and labeled you.

So grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord 

your childhood treasure, your manhood reward.

I found a notebook of Zak's from last year and read through some of his journal entries.  I had to stop when I got to the page that said  "Quick write: What is the meaning of Life".  This was his response:

"I think the meaning of life is a really hard question but it says it right in the Bible (I forgot where) but it says that we Christians are to make disciples of other people and to obey God."

Gaunt

We grasp our cardboard heroes
as we toast with our goblets of sand
and Jesus and God are the Neros
That get in the way of our plan.

And our joys come from drinking our coffee
and breakfast on empty white plates
and our weakening frame craves for
nightmares, like the ones that we drempt we just ate.

The lives that we live have grown thinner
so we fill it with tumescent idols.
enslaved by their sequins
and glittering bridles
We race along panting and chanting their idylls.


If the real Jesus just stood up and joined us
would we notice our hunger at all?
If the Bread of Life offered a hand-out
- if he stretched his own scar punctured hand out,
would there ever be any more doubt?

As it turns out that God who defeated our plans
was always our only hope.
He offered a feast at his table
while we dined upon sawdust and soap
until one day I noticed my skeletal frame
and went chasing the man from the store

He sated my hunger
and made me wonder
what I was fighting him for?

The Golden Eagle

A golden wrinkle on a sea of blue
I saw and eagle and it saw me too
   as it crossed the mirror of a lake
where for and instant we each saw the others' fate.

In his eyes I was accursed and bound
to cast my eye on things beyond my reach.
And climb each tree and mountaintop I could
to grasp at the air and sky on which he stood.

But I --
I now saw him captured in an endless sky
bereft of features, a desert of the open air
a nomad climbing misty sand dunes there
over hilly thunderheads and blazing sun
no songs to sing to anyone.

And so I'll take up gravity with a cup of mirth
     and friendship
that are interred inside
the circle of the earth I ride.

Heraclitus by William Johnson Cory

                                   Heraclitus

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

Occasionaly I find a poem that is so perfect and beautiful and inspiring I just have to share it.  Time to include William Johnson Cory to my list of must read poets.


And speaking of amazing poetry.  I'm in awe of Robert Browning's "Pippa Passes".  It is the most incredible play I've ever read.  I had never heard of it.  Have you?  If you've read it I'll take you out to coffee to discuss it.  Seriously! anybody out there read poetry anymore?

Good Friday

The sun died a little that day
the earth stood gasping in the dark
the light source gone
till shuddering, it flicked back on


The temple rent it's Vail

while scattered whispers
questioned, "Did He fail?"

and thundering silence
blanketed  the dawn.

Perspective

My wishes each process before your throne.
Behind them all a motive
    known to you alone.

You see right through them and address my need
     while I look on.

It seems you take no heed
    to my wants, my will -
         and yet
I trust you still.

On Psalm 73

My Cup Overflows

My faith, like the ocean,
    tiptoes up and down the beach
Your love, like the sand,
remains always within reach.

My eye sees your empty hand
   its scars are full of grace.
My arm extends, its reach too short
  and misses your embrace.

Futilely I wander on begging for a penny
 when you've give wealth untold
 I think I haven't any.

The brightest sunlight on my face
  eclipsed by Your immeasurable grace
   - like a waterfall that cuts through a drought -
Lord, you have blessed me to the brim
and blessed me with without.

-jm

 Whom have I in heaven but you?
       And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
  My flesh and my heart may fail,
       but God is the strength of my heart
       and my portion forever.
 Psalm 73:25-26

Squinting at the Son

Black words on a white field.
Punctuation rain.
Speeding past the dew drops.
Hastening down the lane.

A patch of beauty grows there.
In mud fresh for your toes there.
Join me for a minute
in it.

Look at a field of flowers
for hours

Will you lose time in that glance?

by counting rock and bud
by listening to the creek in flood?

If you've lost a day
   you've lost your soul.

but if after you have come

you lay aside both time and pride
and find that once begun
you could spend a lifetime there
squinting at the Son.


Do you read your Bible? if so, how often do you study it?  I know that I am embarrassed by my own response to the question.  One of my Bible professors wrote something that really challenged me to rethink my fruitless faith and faithless study habits.  Starting today I am planning on reading whole books instead of disconnected chunks.  Here are a list of books with 10 or less chapters to start off with:

O.T.                                      
Ruth
Ezra
Esther
Song of Songs
Lamentations
Joel
Amos
Obediah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephania
Haggai
Malachi

For the N.T.: Start in Galatians and every book (except Hebrews and Revelations) has 10 or less chapters.

Why not alternate O.T. one month, N.T. the next? Read an entire book each day for a month.  Write down your thoughts and interesting questions.  Be amazed.  Be excited.  Answer your own questions. Be challenged.  If you can't manage to do this, ask yourself: Why not?  (p.s. I'm starting with Jude)

A break in the clouds ...

Highjacked by a wide blue sky
kidnapped by an arching sea
waylaid by an eagle cry
captivated by captivity

slow the rescue till I see the moon
if I escape before nightfall
it will be too soon.

20 weeks and counting ...

I'm cold right down the middle

where my coat doesn't meet

I have 10 little sausages 

at the ends of my feet.

My tummy (and my bummy)

- all as round as a beach ball

My face -- a disgrace

double chin and all.

But when my little sprout comes out

all wrinkled up and tiny

I'll crumple up this poem

and feel bad for being whiny.

People are starting to ask me if it's any day now.  Sure, plus or minus Nineteen weeks or so ...

Happy Mother's Day!

On Motherhood

belly fat, sagging rack
the little ache in my lower back
unwaxed eyebrows
"mommy" nails
child proof locks
safety rails

The agony of labor
the burp rags full of spit
despite all this I'm forced to admit
it is still with out doubt entirely worth it!

Zak told me that in kindergarten when his teacher asked him "What are mommies made of" one of his friends replied, "Mommies are made of pretty!" I think that by this point in my life I am made of at least 20% chocolate and probably about 10% donut. I'm not quiet sure about the remaining 70%, hopefully some of it is still pretty!

First born

Trail blazer star gazer
first act, stage fright
curtain raiser.

whistling wonder
happy hummer
you transform the grumpiest grumbler

always smiling, heart beguiling
reaching, stretching, upward climbing

tender hearted, your life's uncharted
keep that soul of yours ramparted

Live for God and you'll live with joy
you'll always be his child
and my little boy.




And for those of you out there that hate poetry I'll say it like it is: I love my son!!

Ummmmm ...

So I'm totally offended by the name of this website but, well, see for yourself. It's a bit long but worth it.