Pressed into Joy

Vashon Hardware, Vashon Island, WA Rudyard Kipling begins his classic “If” poem, urging me to keep my head when all about me  are losing theirs, and I’m certain my head–and its grey matter contents– will soon explode for the sums and ciphers impinging on the brain space I. do. not. have. This is a necessary…

They shimmer and sway in the breeze branchy partners against a Danube blue sky. Glassy diamonds on the green– arrow fragments, light glimmering in an anthem song. The play a tune for my eyes, loudly announcing the beauty of dusk, a message in light music reflecting in emerald on the velvet evening. The leaves bend…

“I don’t know what to do, Lord.” Me–buried, brain full of tasks and to do’s, worried there’s a Right Way to Go. I SO don’t want to miss it. As if. As if God had an opinion on closet cleaning versus photo organizing versus gardening or muffin making or Bible reading. As soon as the…

Across the dining room chairs over the lamp and past the plants through the window, I spy silhouettes that awaken and dance like the pebbled stones in a child’s kaleidoscope, shape-shifting black against the not quite white night sky. Here the leaves move, there they bend and turn branches like sky-borne seaweed in an ocean…

Texas Sky April 2011     Thunderclouds are roiling on the horizon, stacking up East-wise, threatening to move in– move in and dump. But they’re whiter than white can be and only so much vapor. I imagine their rumbling high over distant mountains, molecules leaving mess and mayhem, headed this way. But there’s no running for…