A snippet from a project

Rocks, smooth and brilliant nestle, decades old, in the elbows and knees of the river. Water, cold and so clear it is invisible until a water skate walks, impossibly, on its surface, slides by. 

Low and quiet today. 
Today it is enough simply to glide silently by. 
Maybe tomorrow it will roar, gorged with rain. 
Confused and wild. 

The green branches of trees bend over in a protective embrace. Today, the water is content to be here, passing gently through this wood, but water is ancient. It has cycled through ages and seasons, alternately ascending in the exhalation of evaporation, and descending in a free fall of rain. It has known the splash of children’s fingers, the cleaving of the explorer's prow, the joy of the thirsty wanderers, and it remembers the shadow of the Devine breath in the darkness before there was light. When it too knew the darkness and safety of a womb.

Words

The sunrise brings the day-words
In a basket of brightly burning flame.
Possibilities all jumbled inside,
and, if we are not careful, we will draw
Them out upside-backwards--sharp side outwards.

Words tumbling full of possibility.
Questioning, soothing, correcting, laughing.
Showers of words scattered like wild flowers.
Useful words ordering day by subject.
Sharp words wormy with malice and regret.

The sunset gathers the detritus and,
Recklessly denying another day,
Burns them on an honorable pyre.
We are left to ponder our selections
And vow to choose more wisely tomorrow.

Cheerios

Dry, waiting in the bowl, they glisten in their saccharine gowns, then they float like so many tiny, ill-fated life preservers. Milk-wet, lightly coated in sugar, crispy for those first frantic moments, then soggy like miniature, friable sponges.  Rarely, a lucky breakfaster will find one that is glassed over--Oh! the joy of that honey webbing.  

Cheerios, part of this complete breakfast, now dripping down the cabinet and becoming breakfast for

A love story

The shining drop clung, magnetic, to the quirked tip of the waxy leaf, managing to convey, without words, blush or motion the entirety of the longing passion that a lover feels in the vacuum of absence. 

                           "Coffee or tea?" the smiling blue eyes asked.

                                                                                                        I am here.

Joyfully I returned to the water where we had lavished those red-tinged moments, but I found the

Bread

Warm, soft, tender, whole. It is a mother's love wrapped in a stoneware embrace.  The gluten stretches like billowing linens on a wind-blown line full of the spacious final exhalations of tiny friendly microorganisms.  The homely crust is lumpy and brown, but pride lurks inside those wheaten-walls.  The pride of a mother's deep knowing of children fully fed, quietly nourished, and tenderly satisfied.

In a moment a steel grimace will partition this meal creating a serving where there once was a whole, but, now, while the fragrant heat slips into memory, this humble creation of flour and water stands as a symbol of home and family and faith.

One loaf made and broken again and again, giving each body the elements of life and each soul the vitalizing gasp of hope.  This two pound loaf represents to the disparate and time flung generations the hands that took up bread and gently changed the world.  Those hands, just beginning to show age, selected the humblest of foods to remind the world of the coming of a simple, gentle, mothering Divinity.  A new way and an enduring love both needing a metaphor: a metaphor of seed and growth and home and nourishment.  An alchemy of grain and water into sustenance and love and grace into hope.