I am a queen
With a crooked crown

over what crooked realm 
do I reign

when sometimes
(too often)
not even my own will
obeys

I walk a crooked path
To my crooked throne

I think a crooked thought
Cry a crooked tear
Laugh a crooked laugh

But my love is straight
And true
Crowning you

I scatter pieces
Of myself
Throughout my day

My trail is littered
With a thought here
A worry there

The drooping branch
Of an unfulfilled promise

The lichen covered log
Of old resentments

Browning leaves
Of once was

Slippery pebbles
Of never was

Wishes dropped here
Daydreams there
Distractions everywhere

Until
In my car
At a red stoplight
I watch an ant
Crawl up the windscreen

Ah, I think
That ant never has to try
To collect again
The scattered pieces
Of itself

But I am human

I lose
And I find

I scatter
And I recollect

I see an ant
And I give thanks

I am light and shadow
I am bird and worm
I am warmth and coldness
I am peace and war
I am beauty and ugliness
I am laughter and tears
I am joy and grief
I am energy and tiredness
I am friend and foe
I am comfort and pain
I am whole and broken
I am giving and withholding 
I am embracing and rejecting
I am forgiving and grudging
I am remembering and forgetting
I am releasing and grasping
I am goodness and evil
I am believer and atheist
I am love and hate
I am unity and division
I am now and yesterday
I am eternal and ephemeral 
I am holy and ordinary
I am connected and separate
I am I and not-I
I am who I am
Wondrously human
Wondrously heavenly
Light and shadow
Completely me
Only with all of me
Can I know
Divine oneness

I recorded a poem last night 
A poem by nature

After a too-bright
Too-hot
Too-sticky
July day

Came the rain poem
Punctuated
With thunder and lightning 

Softening
Cooling
Breathing
God’s grace
For our garden

To see God in others
Is spectacularly easy
As long as I carefully chose
Whom I look at

With some, it is hard NOT
To see God
Woody, Wendy, Norma
So many close friends
My writing group
My meditation group
God is so easy to see

But also

That panhandler on the corner
With the cardboard sign
Impossible to read
That scruffy panhandler
Maybe, according to many friends
A con artist
I see God shining through him

Or is it
Possibly
That I merely see God reflected
In my easy generosity

That tantruming toddler
Embarrassing his mother
In the aisles of the grocery store
I see God in her and in her mother

Or is it 
Possibly
That I merely see God reflected
In my easy compassion

My often complaining mother
Who calls me at 10:00 at night
On her cell phone
To tell me her phone isn’t working
I see God in her

Or is it
Possibly
That I merely see God reflected
In my easy acceptance

But what about my troubled step-daughter
Middle-aged
Still needing her daddy
Desperately
His money, his help, his support

What about the needy young friend
Who lived with us for a year
Whom we supported through
Recovery from the trauma of COVID nursing
Who left angrily the first time
We needed a boundary

I blew it

I yelled at both of them
Ugly hurtful yelling
No generosity
No compassion
No acceptance

No reflection of my own goodness
In which to see God

Help me, please, dear Goddess Mother
To see You in them
In their neediness
And even in me
In my ugliness

Silence is not silence
Until I slip below thought

My thoughts
Are often troubled
Wind whipped waves
That drown
Possible worlds

Beneath the swallowing waves
I sink into the cool quiet depths

I find a rock to cling to
Strange that 
I do not need to breathe
I do not die
Nor do I grow gills
I simply sit
In the dark cool depths
Holding onto the rock
The rock that keeps me still
Keeps me from floating back up 
Into the never ending storm
Hurricane tornado tempest cyclone
Of my thoughts

Thoughts that create and destroy
Faster than I can grasp
Thoughts that drown me
In impossibilities

I cling to my rock
Not as in psalms or hymns
My rock is not God
Because that requires thought
And thought is the world killer

So I sit quietly in the cool depths
While worlds of thoughts whirl overhead
I neither breath nor grow gills
I neither believe nor disbelieve
I neither create nor destroy
I sit in dark stillness
Resting against my rock

My anger burned hot
A sudden flare

One too many lightning strikes
Burrowed into the underbrush
Of my willing heart

One too many lightning strikes
Hit the tall trees
Of my good intentions

Smouldering underbrush burst
Into heaven-bent flames
Where bright burning treetops
Met them
In an all-consuming white-hot blaze

Now
Days later
Blackened with soot
Eyes watering from smoke
I bend to read the ashes
Hoping for hope

**Twenty years ago today my husband, Gordon, slipped deeper into a coma. He died at dawn on July 5, 2003.**

The poetry prompt births an ear worm
“These are a few of my favorite things”

And with that worm 
My mind burrows deep 
Into the rich darkness
of the song that Rodgers wrote
For the film version
After Hammerstein was dead

Often gloomy, depressive
But so incredibly talented
He wrote music and lyrics 
Of the gazebo song
“Something Good”

That was the song I sang to Gordon
As we drove to the beach
For the last time
Just a month before he died

Arwen
Who hadn’t yet decided
Her life was better without me in it
Was in the back seat

We shed no tears as I sang
But we all knew we were each crying
Into the silence after I softly sang the last lines
Out of tune, and with wandering notes, no doubt
As I am no singer

Into that forever beyond now silence
Arwen said, “Oh mom”
Gordon squeezed my hand
I leaned my head against the window
And kept my eyes on the road ahead
To the beach and beyond

“The world is pregnant with God!”
	Angela of Foligno

Can we care for Mother Earth
Gravid with God
As we care for pregnancies
In others?
In ourselves?

Once
When my oldest was very young
And very angry with me
He said
“When I’m grown up
And you are little
I am going to be mean to you.”

He thought we would seesaw
Back and forth
Between old and young
Him and me
Forever

God created us
Birthed this world

Now it is our turn
To midwife God’s birth

But we are careless
We humans
Midwives of the Divine
Too often
Too much

The Divine fetus struggles
Its umbilical cord
Choked with smoke
With plastic
With money
With indifference
With disbelief

Will Mother Earth miscarry?
Are we to be abortionists
Of the Divine fetus?