Why not?

The humble name of
the Beloved
burns everything into
breath.
Why not choose
to seek the
crucible, and behold
its luminous
praise?

©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

the generosity of thirst

The generosity of thirst
is changing incredulity
into love, here
where the palpable
affection of God
bends rivers into
silent fire, then
back into
the insouciant,
singing grace
of water.

©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

This

This flame, this ribbon, this branch, this windblown cloudbank covering up the sun.
This song, this crevice, this hammer, this net,
this scrap of orange fabric in the grass.
This pause, this shoelace, this errant ladybug with distended wings crawling across the soft gray crawlspace of my pillow.
This hymn, this bird, this bit of news I wish I hadn't overheard but did.
This wasp fallen into wine.
This lost sentence of love trembling with need,
this half-acre of of sawdust and clay,
this trembling oak leaf suspended by nothing visible from a tender twig in the small gray rain.
This crow, this dog, this laughing coyote, this shed skin that wants to find itself a home in dirt.
This choir stall, this stairwell, this echo of an antiphon in darkness.
This shoe, this hearth, this rock, this bell,
this dazzle of lonesome verbiage truncated into a punctuation full of fire and the scent of piney heartwood as it catches.
This pen, this slip of paper made from sand and bloodroot, wanting nothing but the touch of a thought too small to shout, too big to whisper, too unrepentant to have it out with God,
too shy and wild to say its name in any place where anyone might hear.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

This is another poem from Thanksgiving week of this year, when I was on retreat at Gethsemani.

The Limnologist

She conjures forth bubbles

of fire from frozen lakes.

I heard it on the radio,

circling the dark lanes

of a parking deck

at dusk. A big blue

Suburban nearly backed

into me as I listened to her

talk about the flare

of methane against

the Siberian sky,

just above tables

of dense Russian ice,

and how she freed

the gas from the face

of the invisibly

percolating lake. She is in love

with “the power of water

in its frozen and

unfrozen forms,” and she

unlocks it, standing back

as it lets her have itself—

a propulsion of conjured chemistry,

beloved and unsettling,

a threshold of flow, an ascent

of alchemical liquid strong

enough to free boulders

with the rise of its release.

©Laura Sorrells 2007--2012

all rights reserved