Moon Shadow

It’s not quite right

‘moon shadow’

but I can’t erase it

Cat Stevens is just

too loud in my memory

But as I gaze upon the 

moon-lit sky last night

and move my gaze

from sky to land

lit so bright I could 

make my way by foot

across these fields

where hay rolls lay

indolent in the night

and see trees huddling

together pretending

impenetrability 

smiling into their

leafy hands at what

my eyes cannot see

moonlight or no

and notice the one

tree too slow or too

fiercely independent

to grow where others

are so firmly entrenched

and see its shadow cast

long across the field

longer than any day-light

shadow could hope to reach

I want to leave the cocoon

of the car and the talk of the

bridge game we old ladies

have just played and jump

into the field and dance

my own moon shadow

dance – a memorial to the 

girl who listened to Cat

Stevens with little thought

of the moon and its shadows

so long ago and so near to here

I want to, but I do not

for the other old ladies

always tenderly caring,

wait patiently to see me

safely into my house from

the safety of the car cocoon

and taking my time to dance

the moon light is to steal

her time and I cannot

The Mother & Child Reunion

Driving home from a friend’s, on the upper bank stands a doe and her fawn, preternaturally still as only deer can be when hoping against hope not to be seen by a potential predator.  It actually hurts me to think that I am this gal’s predator, but there it is – reality in all its gore and glory.

We’re frozen together in time, the three of us, she and I gazes locked . . . until the fawn breaks the impasse, moving away with the nonchalance that only the young can afford.

As I leave the country lane inhabited by the two, Paul Simon’s Mother & Child Reunion reverberates from my brain down my spine, its words playing over and over again, unbidden in the course of a lifetime that includes the peaceful meeting (this once) of predator and prey. . . and the reunion is now and it is good.

Mule & Plow: Being Church

You’ll be the mule; I’ll be the plow.

Come harvest time, we’ll work it out.

There’s still a lot of love

here in these troubled fields.

Singing the pain, sorrow and hope of hard times in the farm lands, Nanci Griffith speaks into the soul of despair and in their singing, somehow reshape the darkness into light.

Reshaping the darkness into light: that, I think, is the principal ‘job’ of the Christian.

It’s not Pollyanna.  There’s no call for Hallmark here.

What there is is the belief, surely based on past experience, that together is the tipping point, if not the answer.

Fundamentally, that’s what church is: a together enterprise.

Far from perfect, shoot, we’re often not even friends.

But what we are is not alone.

What we are is together, mule and plow – plow and mule.

What we are is stepping out of darkness into the hope of love – there, where the light lives.

Blessed Are . . .

Blessed are those who sing our blessings
          that we might know something of Divine’s joy

Blessed are those who midwife their own birth
          that they might know the power of existence

Blessed are those who survive
          receiving not virtue but strength

Blessed are those who write the stories
          that we might know who we are

Blessed are the angry
          for they shall keep us honest

Blessed are the kind
          for we in much need of kindness

Blessed is the laughter
          for the laughter will see us through much

Blessed are those who stand at the margins
          slapping the torpor out of the rest – how I hate to own it – of us

Blessed are those who dance
          oh, so, so blessed are those who dance

My 2012 YouTube Favs

They may not have come out in 2012.  But they came to me this year – and gave me humor and every now and then, something more.

So without further ado, my own personal 2012 YouTube Favs list:

1. Anything Monty Python – you have to like that sort of thing, but if you do, no one does it better.


2.  Google Squirrel +Allan – it’s not really a squirrel, but enough googling folk think so that it’s an easy way to get to this, my current fav from the British Walk on the Wild Side.  This is so funny it makes me giddy to watch – I’ve seen it so often it’s become a classic (to my mind, anyhow).

3. Ben Aaron - the holiday sweater craft show, I predict, will become classic – like the logs in the fireplace static television pic so popular in NYC, nothing says Christmas quite like a Christmas sweater (especially one with plastic angels as epulets).

4. Flash mobs - anywhere/anytime, but especially the Food Court performance of the Hallelujah Chorus – taking the Hallelujah Chorus and asking, fries with that? brings it all to the next level – the next level of what I’m not sure of, but it’s definitely the next level.



5. Leonard Cohen’s Anthem – my one and only serious one.  Hat’s off, Mr. Cohen, hat’s off.

Thank you YouTube contributors of the world for sharing your humor, your wisdom, your talent, your sense of fun, with the rest of us.  And keep those holiday sweaters coming!

Rainfall on the Tin Roof

It rained yesterday – the answered-prayer kind of solid, steady and even gentle rain that crops and children adore in equal measure.

As I listen to the sound of each drop on the tin roof where it resonates the loudest – in the back attic bedroom – I am minded of childhood cozy-under-the-blanket and splashing in the puddles times . . . of sprinting as if I could outrun each drop times . . . of water-filled laughing times . . . of quiet-talk lover times . . .

I love the rain – each has it’s own personality.  I think of  Singin' in the Rain, where the rain is a character in the dance.

But most of all, I thank God for these rains, these life-giving to dry and thirsty land rains.