My Last Visit With Mother
“Before you go,
Come see the daffodils.”
And
yes, there gratefully was
That extra minute.
She was so proud of
their beauty,
Placed now in sunlight warmth,
Purchased not raised by her
hand.
Nevertheless a beauty.
A Beauty to be shared.
Her hearing
not always best
Now diminished by 85 years,
I wonder if she heard me
say:
“Daffodils are such happy flowers.”
--Margaret Mary Knittel
Geneva, Ill.
The Bible As the Compost Pile
A Poem Inspired by Walter Brueggemann’s
Texts
Under Negotiation
Behind our house,
new to us,
I discover
compost
Left there by the last owners
And an old garden
all played
out
An inadequate piece of ground
Barren and arid from misuse and
neglect
Where even the weeds are stunted
And of a variety that spring up
in poor soil.
That barren ground longs for some
Discarded old
growth,
Willingly cast off
Containing seeds of its own
Which elude
me now.
I spread the compost
On the barren ground
in a gesture of
hope
for regeneration.
Maybe I’ll grow some grapes for
wine
And flowers for the table.
Perhaps a squash seed from a long
forgotten dinner
Will spring up among fresh lettuce.
Maybe a pumpkin will
grow from out of
A row of beans,
A tomato plant in the marigolds.
Life
and surprises from old barren ground.
--Robert Thiefels
Hinesburg, Vt. This, too, Is Holy
To unroll the toilet tissue and wipe
The wet of the elderly
resident
In Room 211; to anoint the scaly
Permanent bedsores of the
patient almost
Past pain and its palliatives; to be sent
To the
call-light of the dementia case
Or the accident victim of twenty
Now no
longer respondent to scan; to bend
To the whispered request for a hand
To
grasp as the baby is born;
To wash the feet that might have been
His, and
not leave them unblessed.
--Nancy G. Westerfield
Kearney, Neb. |
-- NCR photo/Matt Stoulil
Transubstantiation
We knew the flat treeless plain
Where the low sky borders
the land
Where wind strums the golden heads of wheat fields
and
grandfather prays dependency.
On a summer’s day
We children
stood looking south
Far down the rutted dry road
For movement
For
horse and buggy
Bearing the itinerant priest.
We knew he would appear
early afternoon
on this, the first Saturday of the month
As he always
did
Beginning early spring until late fall
When snows obliterated
roads.
We sentinels
Spying the single black dot in the
distance
Sent the alarm,
“The priest! The priest is
coming!”
Grandmother
Summoned grandfather from the wheat
fields
to welcome and to escort
This revered lone traveler
to quarters
made ready for him.
What a wonder-filled day it was
When this man of
God
Came to break bread
Amid the blessed fields of wheat!
--Monica L. Zabor
Arlington Heights, Ill.
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