I wake wrapped in zebra sheets. (Maybe that accounts for my battling-the-tiger dreams of the other night.) Light streams through the basement window, and I turn, and full moon hovers bright. I’ve tossed all night, brain churning with medical and financial waves. I reach out and pat them, chenille scattered–Patsy Clairmont and Blackwater Ben and […]
So We Give All . . . Third World Symphony
She lives in Kenya. I sit down this morning to write to her, her last letter at my right hand. She tells me she was in position 1 in the first term of school and in position 3 in the third term. She tells me that she and her family are in good health and […]
Textures of Text: It’s a Mystery
All mystery feels like fog. It presents hiddenness. It demands strong faith to walk into it believing that one day it will be demystified. ~Luci Shaw It’s a mystery this hunger for the hidden, the faulty that aches for the faultless, the flawed that yearns for the flawless, how the best havings are in the […]
Textures of Text: Let’s Go All Word Wild
Perhaps the role of those involved in the arts, then, is to awaken ourselves and others to beauty–in all its risk and richness. ~Luci Shaw Let’s go all word wild. Let’s bound over boundaries and color outside the fence lines. Let’s open up new spaces within ourselves and dive in deep waters. Let’s be reckless […]
Textures of Text: Servant of the Word
Again, as so often before, I felt the secret thoughts rising in me, trusting them to be God-thoughts making themselves known. ~Luci Shaw breath of His breath I watch and wait spirit of the wild and untamed wind rushing water of many colors swirling dry bones dance to celestial tunes God-thoughts rise beauty to beauty […]
Textures of Text: A Tale of Water
I yank the freezer door open and scoop a handful of ice from the purchased bag into her cup. A few chunks fall on my feet, and I kick them out of the way. I go out to the back kitchen and press the spigot on the white ceramic water crock. I fill the […]
Textures of Text: You Might Not Finish This Post
It’s a glitter globe night. Hundreds (thousands? more?) of lights flicker across the dark field. I can’t capture them with my camera. They rise up into and past the trees. Rising stars. Until it seems earth meets sky, and it’s hard to tell where the fireflies end and heaven’s lights begin. Each flash could represent […]
Textures of Text ~ Book Review: Give the Lady a Ride by Linda Yezak
My husband grew up on a dairy farm. I know what it’s like to roll under barbed and electric wire. I did it once when Bozo the bull charged. Though Dennis claims he was only curious. I tried to ride a stubborn burro once–who managed to simply lean against the cement milk house and smash […]
God in the Yard: The End~Hospitality
Embrace the life you have before it’s gone. ~L.L. Barkat Please, God, let my parents come and beat her up. We’d had a sword battle with pencils, Penny and I. And Mrs. Smith rapped my 7-year-old knuckles. But not Penny’s. So I turned around and scribbled on Penny’s picture. And now I stood in the […]
Textures of Text: Poems-in-Waiting
Last week I texturized a year of my poetry in Wordle form in response to a T.S. Poetry Press challenge. And L.L. Barkat found a poem-in-waiting within those words: Now find love gentle sweet, like blue expectations attached to grace. She found other poems in the Wordles of others, too, and featured them as well as […]
