Sometimes I

Sometimes I imagine
Just walking away,
Without a plan,
Without companions,
Just leave it all

Behind.

In my mind,
It’s an extended vacation,
Without responsibility,

Forgetting that,
In the real world,
There would be
Twice as many bills
And infinitely more
Heartache.

Can't Out Read That Boy

When Jadon was a year, was two,
He would sit with me, with my mom,
For an hour, for two,
And listen quietly and still
To book after book.
We might grow hoarse,
But still he listened.

Today Jadon sat on the couch and read
To his brother, now a year, for an hour,
Using voices, making sounds,
Laughing,
As the love he received before he could
Remember it
Flows to his younger brother.

Baby Bobbing

Caleb figured out that he could push
The bench
To the counter
And climb up.

We trained him not to sit on the counter.

The next day, we looked at
The baby, standing on
The bench,
Hands on counter,
Face buried in
A bowl,

Bobbing for apple(sauce).

Unjust Judge

A friend of mine once went before
An unjust judge.
He fought for justice for years,
Difficult when the arbiter of his fate
Was the inhibiter of his justice.

I hadn’t realized before how strong
Groaning prayers could be.
I groaned for my friend, going up once again,
And somehow the court scene shifted.
It felt miraculous.

I have another friend now,
In a different state,
Also facing an unjust judge.
I can sense her terror and
Helplessness.

God says: “Seek justice,
Correct oppression;
Bring justice to the fatherless;
Plead the widow’s cause.”
Yes, please, God. Bring justice. Plead.

Restful

Somehow three months had passed
Since our last visit.

In the three hours we talked of many things,
And went our separate ways, all, satisfied and rested.

Ethnicity

We know the ethnicity of every character who has a name in the Bible—not one is lost on us.

I wonder at the person who realized this first,
Tracing the ethnic backgrounds
Of characters great and small.

Three of my four grandparents
Immigrated to the United States.
My ancestry is important to me.

I like that ancestry is also important to God.

So Sick

At one point during my illness,
I thought,
I will never be healthy again. How can
Anyone recover after feeling this bad?

A week later, I feel like my brain remains
In slow motion, and my body drags around
Behind the normal me like some dress train
That keeps snagging and needs to be
Coddled.