the secret changes

My pilgrim heart
waits for you
in the middle of
its own unrecognized
silent compass.
Your wordless psalm
lets me pray along
with it, all of us
alive together
here in the secret
changes of faith's
transfiguring night.

©Laura Sorrells 2015
all rights reserved

hidden and emptied

The hidden breath of faith

murmurs a lonely

little prayer

in the unmoving cave
of my emptied
heart. Listen to its silent

passion and

surround its shape

with your radiant

Paschal love.

©Laura Sorrells 2015

all rights reserved

the rhetoric of silence

The burning cure
of sacramental encounter
is calling me out
of my stillness.
The rhetoric of silence
is teaching me how
to ask, how to
worship. How to
confess the petty
troubles of my
willingness. How,
finally, to remain,
despite the pull
of the world's
safe and stifling
strangeness.

©Laura Sorrells 2014
all rights reserved

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

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.