Sunday, April 27, 2014

I cannot deal with death, though death will surely deal with me.
The power greater is that washes all away to sea,

than my poor frantic scrabblings of oh god it cannot be,
my shallow and pathetic strokes against the enemy.
And now the years have passed I see the anguish will remain,

the stabbing grief is still as deep as that first shaft of pain
the day death came. And it is plain
time has no balm, and is not sorrow's bane.
Even so. We are alive to live.
We have been made for life, to give
and take within the living world, and if
my reason bids me false, I will lie quiet in my grave:
Death, thou art wrongful!
I charge thee death, with all my will,
thy eventual destruction is writ down and cannot fail,
and life will prevail.

Sunday, April 20, 2014


Easter morning
I sit on my temporary porch
facing east Easter morning.
Some day we may build a deck,
but today it is these four steps.
There the old old swing
generations have joyed,
here a quick coffee in a favourite mug,
there sunshine on old hopeless snow banks.
We will be thirty or more
in our old house today,
and I'm stealing a moment
because I did not have time for church:
and here is the sun
the cool spring breeze
the leaf-waiting trees
and a choir of geese, sparrow, magpie, crow,
and a solo by mourning dove.
  *********************


Frozen puddle
Good Friday
Two timeless days dead
and the world changes.
The death you feared came near.
Troubled, overwhelmed, forsaken, you died.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014


If I do not hear from God
I will just keep listening
and try to be

kind.

 I don't need to see a burning bush,
and couldn't take it if I did.
But as I walked into the woods,
I saw a glow,
a hidden shine,
and past the poplars, maples, oaks,
I came upon a brilliant sign.
A dried grass vision, small but mine.

My writing is going through a dry spell, but I was fortunate to see and photograph the lunar eclipse going on just over our house in southeast Manitoba last night. It was a cold one at 2:00 a.m., -13C or so. Mars is visible above and to the right of the moon in the first photo. I believe the star below and to the right is Spica.
This was beautiful and amazing to behold.