Lamenting all we’ve lost,
  are losing, we watch things
    slipping through our fingers,
      like soapy water as we sing
        and wash our filthy souls; 

bathed in sorrow, drenched,
  submerged and almost, not quite,
    drowning in it....hope flutters up.
      bursts from hearts too full to hold
  ...

I am adrift
   on a long, slow flow
of memory's stream.
   I am floating,
recalling places
   I have never been,
gazing into a colossal tree
   at the gargantuan nest
of an eagle, scouring the sea 

to find food
   for hatchlings that are
indiscernible to my eyes.
   Does he know
I'm waiting, watching
   as he s...

My husband arrived with Easter flowers
Plucked from our yard when the florists closed;
They sit on a gilded, oaken prayer rail,
Some bougainvillea and a faded rose. 

There is no glorious romantic gesture,
Expensive or expansively bestowed
That can compare with this simple offering
Of bougainvillea and a ...

He sits on the roadside
breathing ebony air,
swimming in ink
as thick as curdled milk,
blind to the passerby;
he hears everything:
all their conversations,
exclamations, furtive murmurings.
They all know who he is,
they know his father, mother,
disgraced kin.  He's famous,
infamous, his beggarly aroma
repulsive...

Everyone’s an evangelist for something.  It’s natural.  If something has changed your life for the better, you want to share that with others, especially if you love them.  I’m an evangelist for Neti-pots and weighted blankets.  My children recently put on an impassioned, full-court press for me to ...

On the day that America entered the War in Iraq, I knelt in church praying this Prayer of the Holy Innocents from the Book of Common Prayer:

      “Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims, and by your
      great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish yo...

Some of us will be statistics,
counted among the thousands
who succumbed;
no splashy send-off,
flower-strewn casket or
weeping mourners.
                                    Mother Teresa
died just a day before Princess Di,
the former passing lost in a fanfare
of glamorous grief…probably
just the way the saint...

When your arms, holding, hurt, O God,
  all full of painful cactus spines,
temptation sees you as our foe.
  Foes abound, without a doubt...
foes that you cannot abide--
  fear and cruelty, hearts of stone.

But you were pierced with spines
  that caused your sacred heart to bleed
for the wounded, weary, w...

I can still see bromeliads growing
  from behind the glass, stalks projecting,
reaching, golden crowns lifting.

And I can see wisteria blooming,
  hanging fragrant purple heads,
mourning in the morning light. 

Birdsong penetrates my walled-off ears,
  and hummingbirds and butterflies
are still winging i...

I had one uncomfortable moment when my cousins were visiting me.  Even growing up in the same extended family, we have very different attitudes about some things.  One of those “bones of contention” involves social media.  Other than my blog, I don’t participate in social media.  I do follow my chil...