Month: December 2023

Womb of the World

vabutsy poems 
The womb of creation
Those words nest in my mind
And shiver down my limbs

(I have resisted Googling the phrase
I suspect it is a rather common imagery
But not to me)

Listening 
Christmas morning
To the start of John’s insight
Sitting behind my mother
My 99 year old mother
In the sunlit activities room
Attending Mass
In the assisted living unit

In the beginning 
God exhaled Their Word
Into the void
And the void was no more

In the beginning 
God’s Word
Was the womb of creation

And then again
Later
In Mary’s womb
Was the Word of creation







Jonah’s Lament

vabutsy Paraphrases, poems 
Three days!

THREE DAYS! I spent
In the belly
Of that goddamn whale

Three days! Because You 
YOU
Were so determined 
to have me 
in Nineveh 

Three days! All dark and slimy 
Belched up
Finally
On Nineveh’s beach

So I told them
I warned them
Mighty YHWH
Would smite them

Then they make this big show
Led by their weaselly king
Sackcloth and ashes 
Wailing and gnashing of teeth
Big bloody show

And now You won’t smite them
Smite them, damn You!
Three days!
In a whale
And You won’t smite them
What kind of god are You?
What kind of prophet does that make me?

I’m so angry I could die
Go on, kill me already
Why not?
Why those three days
Of darkness and terror
If You’re going to go all soft again
And spare them all?

Oh no, You won’t smite them
Instead You kill that lovely bush
That shaded me
From YOUR hot sun
Now I suppose You want
Me
To rot in Your hot sun

Probably for three days

Three days of my life!
Three days in a bloody great whale
Vomited up in Nineveh
Why, I ask You, why?

All I ask is that You smite
Every last man, woman, and child,
Every beast and bird
In Nineveh.

But all You smote
Was my bush.

Three days in a whale
And I don’t even get
To see Nineveh
Properly
Smote.

Three days!
To watch a worm-eaten bush
Wither and die.

I’m so angry I want to die.

Oranges & Lemons & Bells

vabutsy poems 
Yesterday
Parking at Mom’s
I noticed the three bells
Atop the steeple
Of the Catholic Church next door.

This morning
On Facebook
Appeared one of those random
Suggested-for-you posts

The bells of Notre Dame de Paris
In procession
Led by the largest bell
Taller by far
Than the robed men
(yes, all men -- 
Catholic priests and deacons
One assumes)
Lining the aisles

And now
Rilke’s poem
Of a bell tower

Oranges and lemons
Sings my memory

Synchronicity
Chimes my mind

How will I pay
That pesky piper
Dancing macabre
Through the cathedral

Piping my years
In notes
Higher by far
Than the smallest bell

Ring the changes!
Living is dying
Dying is forever never

How will I pray?
I do not know
Say the great bells of Bow.

Old Age

vabutsy poems 
For six decades I created.
I grew in my family.
I grew in myself.
I grew in knowledge.
I grew in love.
I grew in responsibilities.
I grew in losses.

And I see everything I have made
And, indeed, it is all very good

Except for the parts that are very very bad
Or in between 
Or the parts that I don’t remember
Or don’t want to remember
Or the parts that were both good and bad
Like childbirth
And parenting
And marriaging
And divorcing
And, well, come to think of it,
Pretty damn near all of it.

And now
In the seventh decade
I rest
Grateful

Though too often
This Sabbath time
Is feared and despised

Yet still
I rest.



Justice O’Connor’s Last Task

vabutsy poems, ponderings

Sandra Day O’Connor
Sandra Day O’Connor
One in a million
First in history
THE most influential vote in the Supreme Court for decades
First of the “sisters-in-law”, those heroes of my middle age: SDO and RBG
Definitely, the BEST thing Reagan did (IMHO)
Sandra Day O’Connor, the ultimate moderate liberal conservative.

I don’t want her to rest in peace.

I don’t want RBG to rest in peace.

With their powerful spirits freed from failing bodies,

I want them to HAUNT us and help us.

Screw the oligarchs,

screw the “deep divide”,

let our future be a nation of idealists,

governed by realists.