I walk the plank into the front wagon and weave my way through knee-high drifts while I try not to step on other feet or legs. D and I find our spot and lean back against the straw-padded side. We pile more straw over our legs and then lay a blanket over that. The green […]
Into His Presence
Note: In just five weeks, I’ll find myself next to the Frio River in the hill country of Texas when I attend The High Calling retreat at Laity Lodge. And oh how I need it as I’ve been going through a rather hard and hectic season. I need to be in this place with my […]
Look. Light. by Laura Lynn Brown
I first met Laura face-to-face on a writer’s retreat at Laity Lodge where we discovered we’re both deep see divers–as in seeing deep. She makes music with her words and on her tin whistle. Some day maybe I’ll buy another harp–a small, portable one–and team up with her for a duet. Or not. […]
To My Mother: A Villanelle
This Making Manifest study has me combing my blog for poetry attempts, and I ran across this villanelle (my first and quite possibly my last) written in response to a December 2011 poetry prompt issued by The High Calling and Tweetspeak Poetry. I wrote it a month after my mother died, and it seems right to revisit it as […]
move forward, bounce back, and press on
I realized it just this morning. She was my age. She was also a nurse. Instrumental, I understand, in birthing this place. She was admitted the same day we were, to the room next door to ours. She’d done battle for 18 years. A bone marrow donor stood ready, but she could not bounce […]
When You’re Not Comfortable
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mom lately. I imagine I always will come fall. Because brain cancer came with the fall, discovered by a fall. We lost her two years ago this month, though some days it seems like yesterday. I hover over her squint at tilted back and crooked neck. Are you […]
in which I can’t breathe
I can’t tear myself away from the Weather Channel. Away from the photos and videos of devastation and heartbreak. I can’t breathe for the weight on my chest and the ache in my heart. And I’m stunned by the power. Oklahoma. I’m writing and weeping over at BibleDude today. Won’t you tiptoe over and sit […]
sing a new song
Snow fell on Sunday. In May. On Mother’s Day. It frosted the tulips white. “My mother would not be happy today,” my sister posted on Facebook. “She wouldn’t even be amused.” And I doubt if even we could have made her crack a smile by bursting into song and dance, perhaps with a spring […]
comfort in the uncomfortable
Comfort, the word, always takes me back to that uncomfortable place. A hospital bed surrounded by a forest of faces and the smell of alcohol and acetone. They’re removing the polish from toenails and fingernails, making yet another stab in my forearm, trying to pour life back into my body. While life pours into my […]
I will give you rest
It rests between the large jars of cinnamon and parsley, peeks at me from behind the glass restaurant-style sugar dispenser. Sissy gave it to me, this duckie tea infuser. I take it out, hold it in my palm, stroke it. I squeeze my eyes tight and think back to that day in the dollar store […]
