Faded Roses

The flowers began as a wistful dream of a bountiful harvest, but once cut from the bushes and placed within a vase, they began to fade and crumble—a falling off begun because the blooms were separated from their source.

Nothing living can long survive without nurture. So much depends on tender care. In this life with its challenges, desperation, distractions, doubts, fears, being connected to a network of people who love us is essential.

In this time of isolation, we must find realistic ways to rally our spirits in whatever togetherness we can devise. We need safety zones to engage in conversation without masks and where we can give hugs freely.

We would be negligent to disregard the needs of those who are most vulnerable, but even they need the reassurance of beloved faces and physical touch.

It has been an exceedingly difficult year, but we can help others bloom and remind each one that even in a shadow season, the Lord is present. God will eventually clear the clouds away, and the beauty of humanity’s promise will shine as newly minted gold.

OverFlow

Some do not understand
Why we turn and walk away
Never
Knowing our fragile hearts
How they beat another rhythm
When we give ourselves today,
How the tears are
Ripples
From the fountains feeding
Who we try to be while
Feeling incomplete vessels
Sampled forms deserted for
Others
With greater prospects, appeal,
Turned with haste into examples
Of what may have been, through
Greater effort within potential.

The light finds each flaw
Magnifies the cracks, spaces,
Where
There is still a chance
To advance, to be adorned
With the singular lovelinesses
Admitting sudden fascinations
Displacing consternations.
All
In all, it is in God’s hands
Who may bless possible plans
Or sudden, place us on
Another path
With probabilities grander
Than anything previously
Understood
By who we could become.

Alive

Leaf light filters through
Casting mosaic patterns
Brown, crimson, golden
Painted floor of woods cushioned
So footfalls are hardly heard.
Somewhere a dog howls,
A coyote snickers and yelps
An owl asks questions
No one deigns to give reply
Quiet nestles peace to rest.
As dusk falls, followed
By the skeins embroidering
Night, a crystal moon
Sighs strewing pale reflections
Of incandescent day bright.
Beyond window glows
Secrets like insulation
Keep swallowed stories
As deep as Earth and Ocean
Full as the starred Milky Way.
In hearts brilliant hot
Coals aroused to give new flame
Love Becomes Again
Whatever the driving force,
We, humans, find home together.

So T’is

We, a masterpiece,
Painted love upon the present
Never are erased,
Caresses full of ardor
Colored words our wild passion.

I believed in you
Long enough to breathe your life
Into what was mine,
Now we are never alone
Bound each to one another.

Fixed pieces within
A frame carefully cited
Who we are and may
Become on some future day;
Art skillfully executed.

The purse lies empty,
No one dares to refill it,
Because they want no
Part of its obligation;
Owning possibilities.

I cannot ever
Know because it is yours to
Take, to carry on,
But I love you – despite grief,
Which will not have you, the thief.

If you wish, your prompt is to create things that demonstrate how you have reality in hand but are somehow outside it. Dare to be the freedom that expresses what is yours and yet beyond yourself. Life is a crucible, be the alchemy.