Aching Body

Children, more like toddlers run down the hall underneath large blue streamers hosting silhouettes of sea turtles and whale sharks. Chasing after them, my body rebels. At 49, every part of my body moves in protest. Worse yet, there's no comfort in rest. My legs want to swim while me head desires a pillow. Those eight hours of sleep do not exist in my world. When I wake, my back cries out. Guess this old age. My new job is to embrace it.

Dementia

To my window she comes

There's not much time

Tell me your secrets and and I'll carry them with me

Sprinkle them.on the wooden path, on top of your footprints

On good days, I sit at my window.

Open my broken mind, fish out my memories

And speak

Two by two in song, they drink my words and sing

I'm dying, but my body will go on functioning in this world

In the midnight hours, I busy myself

Boxing up memories, bitter and sweet

Rereading books and poems that contain words for stirring emotion

Saying prayers with the hopes of finally getting the meditation right

Once done, I close the box on my life and bury it

Underneath the bottle tree my husband made from the wine we drank

Before the last pile of dirt was out back in place

I beg and pray that I remember one Word, just one

Sprig of Lavender

 Weeds choke the garden, killing  the pumpkins planted only months before

Half neglectful, the gardener begins to read, but only when she's bored

Finds it spiritual even 

The weeding starts on the bank across the driveway

Pumpkins are dead

Let the dead bury the dead, she mutters

When she finally makes it over the side

A calm arrests her olfactory senses

Buried  underneath, beauty thrives

She plucked a sprig of lavender

Devouring its sweetness of romance and promises and in a faint whisper, "God."

Christmas Carol Practice

We clicked going for a 9am practice on a Saturday morning 30 minutes away.

We were late, of course and lost

There were no directions posted in the email for the music room

The only one around to ask for directions was a caffeine starved priest seemingly desperate for peace

His directions were perfect, thankfully.

You could here them, 20 girls not quite in tune singing classic/commercial carols for the elderly

I had flashbacks of my choir days in college and wondered why the girl's voices weren't being whipped into shape

Until I realized it's not about perfection, but joy and fellowship

 

Dogwood Tree

My neighbors dogwood tree bloomed the color of purity

As five neighbors stood outside between my house and the tree 

Watching somebody's home across the street burn

All if us in awe, sorrow, and fear

If it happened to their house, it could happen to ours

That vinyl siding house went up in flames like nobody's business

I looked at my cedar house, knowing if it burned, it would be a bonfire for the ages

I put that out of my mind and watched the firemen hook up the water main two steos from my yard

I'm the last of my neighbors to go inside partly in awe of the sight, but mostly in shame

That it was them and not me

Saint Barbara

 It was a tower he put her in

You know, the one on Green Street

In his determination, he declared with a beer in hand

"Ain't nobody gonna disrespect my baby

So up in her tower his daughtet sat pondering creation

When your view is that of a bird, the world looks different

You become above petty shit

Only the best pagan teachers cone to visit

But they that lived below didnt understand that her view was above and closer to God

Boredom sat in

Father sent suitors to her in the prospects of marriage

But they were all sent away

They did not come with water and a crucifix

Only a man of Christ could give her what she desired

Baptism

Butterfly Emerging

 My cocoon is made up of sins

Venue sins sparkle and can almost be dusted away

But the mortal ones require force and will to remove them

Only a real Mariposa will fight to remove the heart of sin and emerge it's beauty