A DAY FOR GRACE

This is a day of slow fire,
birch quietly burning in a black wood stove,
no wind, little sound, even when dust
falls mote by mote upon crusted
white snow and smoke rises
white from a dozen chimneys.

Today the markets are closed,
a day between skirmishes,
houses on Wall Street
assaulting pension funds for the infirm,
elderly and helpless,
bankrupting the retired,
collateral damage that yielded someone
a hefty bonus.

A Sabbath for children driven
homeless into dirty streets,
a day coyotes howl in broad daylight
and dogs answer defiantly
through trees on another farm.

A few feathers from a small bird
lie scattered on the snow,
a chickadee for something’s meal,
must have been an owl,
could a fox do that?

As I walk by, the horse is glad for company.
He stands all winter in his paddock under trees
He gallops fluidly in circles when coyotes or wolves
give voice.
His fear expressed so gracefully!

Somewhere this is a day of packed freeways,
lines at theatres, soup kitchens
border crossings between famine and war.
911 will be dialled a thousand times today,
as if something dark and twisted
from another planet
is prowling our streets

A day of fear.
the debtor weaves his credit
into blankets too thin for winter cold.
The fallen on every side,
cancerous flesh dissolving
before the toxic chewing of a million
microscopic mouths.

A day for filling the woodbox,
a cold front arrives tonight,
last summer’s cutting and splitting
keeps us warm while a gypsy jazz
violin plays softly,
stars dancing like tiny flakes of snow.

The evening news is filled with stories
of lay-offs, unemployment, foreclosures,
bankruptcies, mark-downs, write-offs,
shut-downs, inflation, price increases.

A time of uncertainty
who will be homeless, a refugee,
and who will survive?

A day that calls for great faith,
great love, the graceful same.

NAKED

I timothy 6

Birth is at the gate of entrance,
Exit is the gate of death..

we brought nothing into the garden,
when tentitvely we came,
children’s voices inviting us to play,
we can take nothing out when we leave,
angels voices drawing us from autumn’s ashes.

Nothing out?
We leave with memories,
relationships, personhood,
after a lifetime of chasing
wind-blown leaves.

MATINS

a sickle of moon is caught
in the branches of cottonwoods
along the ice choked river.

a black night.

Stars in their constellations
so far away,
my prayers fly nakedly,
shadows among them.

It is cold.

with broken star gazers who pray,
I await a reply.
simple worship does not seek
the approval of an echo.

Freezing, yeilding to the shivers
of cooling blood, I stumble in
to wait by my fire
of forest wood.

I hear silver chimes
hanging in the blue spruce
outside my frozen window
played by mercy of sudden wind.

a sickle moon, a star,
a wrung out prayer,
matins sealed with silver chimes.