Resurrection Bodies

I laundered my iPhone the other day,

left in a pants pocket bound for washer glory.

After all the agitation and spin ceased,

below the damp graveclothes,

I found its corpse, cold and dead,

circuitry and battery drowned.

Ashes to ashes, suds to suds.

 

How our lives seem to rely on our phones.

How anxious we feel about sudden loss!

But fear not,

iCloud carried a backup.

 

After purchasing and registering a newer model,

restoring from the heavenly Cloud began.

Soon, all my old apps, photos, and music

miraculously appeared on my new phone.

My old phone’s configuration,

its personality, its spirit, its soul,

resurrected in the new model.

The same soul in an upgraded body,

newer, sleeker, faster, better,

more glorious.

A promise to us all.

 

Mark D. Stucky, Time of Singing 48:1 Spring 2021 

Housekeeping

We mourn the broken things, chair legs

wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,

the threadbare clothes. We work the magic

of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.

We save what we can, melt small pieces

of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones

for soup. Beating rugs against the house,

we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading

across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw

the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs

out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie.

I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,

listen for passing cars. All day we watch

for the mail, some news from a distant place.

 

Natasha Trethewey, Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000)

Recess, Second Grade

Past the blacktop, past the swings
a girl has wandered into tall grass,
dry and golden and high, and look
how she tucks in beneath the seed heads
and makes in the stems a nest,
lies on her back and looks up at the sky.
She can hear the screams and squeals
of other children as they play.
But here she is daughter of silence,
fallen angel of sunshine. There are wings
inside her breath. What does she know
that I have forgotten? What does she
love that I now squint to see?
Where does she still live in this woman,
this wanderling who was me?

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com

No Matter What They Say

You do not have to get over it.
You will carry your grief
and be carried by loss
in any way the carrying happens.
As if you had a choice.
Grief builds rooms inside you
no one else will ever see,
rooms with doors
only you can pass through
filled with songs or silence
only you can hear.
Rest here. Or dance here.
Shout. Or whisper. Rise
like milkweed seeds on the wind.
Or lie. Here, you can only do it right.
Here, there are no other eyes
or ears to tell you what to do
or how long it will take
or what choices to make.
And if you are weeping, weep.
And if you are dry, you are dry.
The rest of the world
can talk about stages
of grief and how it should be,
but you, you do not have to listen.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com October 11, 2024

Just a Thing?

I’ve worn it since the day he died,
this ring that was my son’s.
A simple band—not flashy.
Plain silver inlaid with white.
I touch it when I think of him.
I think of him when I touch it.
My thumb has memorized
its smoothness, its edges.
I know it now as well
as once I knew his cheek.
I wear its secrets,
and do not ask it to tell.
One winter, I lost the ring.
It felt like losing him again.
I know. It’s just a thing.
But it’s not. It was his ring.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com October 14, 2024 

Lord, how much juice you can squeeze

Lord, how much juice you can squeeze from a single grape.

How much water you can draw from a single well.

How great a fire you can kindle from a tiny spark.

How great a tree you can grow from a tiny seed.

My soul is so dry that by itself it cannot pray;

Yet you can squeeze from it the juice of a thousand prayers.

My soul is so parched that by itself it cannot love;

Yet you can draw from it boundless love for you and for my neighbor.

My soul is so cold that by itself it has no joy;

Yet you can light the fire of heavenly joy within me.

My soul is so feeble that by itself it has no faith;

Yet by your power my faith grows to a great height.

Thank you for prayer, for love, for joy, for faith;

Let me always be prayerful, loving, joyful, faithful.

 

Guigo the Carthusian, susansbooksandgifts.com November 25, 2020

Be Careful

and watch your back, my mother used to say

each time I stepped out the door, left her

for the airport and the long trip back home.

Now, I look over my shoulder, expecting

to find her there, leaning on her purple cane,

oxygen tube trailing as she inches forward.

Out of the 60,000 thoughts I will have today,

let this one live at the forefront of my mind:

Her love will never die. And out of the 600,000

words in English, let mother be the one that

I carry with me through the difficult hours,

like a stone to rub over and over, looking up 

into my rear-view mirror to see who or what

might be following me.

 

James Crews, The Weekly Pause October 4, 2024