the simple everything

The inexorable law
of light comes home
to us in the brave and
difficult voice of rain and
wind. Receive that
consuming love
and be made
into the simple everything
of God's perfect fire.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

music and silence

The glowing wind arrives full of sky,
humming with the sound of hornets' ghosts.
Every day I hear the beloved music of the
Earth. The silence is a scarlet oar
taking me through the weather.
Already the bright field of you
blooms in a music of fog and hawk,
the quiet birthday of thistles,
the gentle parent of geese and peonies.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

vocabulary

When the living syllables
of sky and forest
shine through the silent shapes
of sweetgum and red oak,
I search among their scraps for
the powerful, lonely
somewhere of you.
Infinite and wordless,
you hunt my solitude down
and fill its hours with
the vocabulary of daybreak
and campfire, the poetry
of forgiveness vivid
in the roots of
your dancing, passionate
question.

©Laura Sorrells
all rights reserved

This is a found poem I wrote today using words from  the children's book A Crow Doesn't Need a Shadow: a Guide to Writing Poetry from Nature by Lorraine Ferra and a whole bunch of very poetic children.

inside

Who is it
breathing inside
the shameless green
moment
grace chooses?

--©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

kindled

Listen for the secret name
of God
that the sky prays
in April.
Something wild
and shining follows me
across the dark roof
at night.
My kindled heart
cracks into
lace and marble,
a silent room waiting gladly
for the auspicious weather of Christ
to meet me,
carrying nothing, new-born and
empty as light.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

I got this found poem mostly from Annie Dillard's beautiful book Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, which I just ran across while looking through some old books of my mother's.

morning prayer

Reverence draws out bliss.

Let the heat of the water on my neck in the morning be an engine for a righteous fire on behalf of my best efforts, my kindest impulses, and my truest hopes.

Let the taste of Greek yogurt and Grape Nuts I share with the dawn chorus remind me of every sweetness possible in the yearnings of sunrise over Sharptop.

Let the conversation I have with the barista who’s overwhelmed with latte orders be one of grounding humor and understanding.

Let the laughter I share with my students before the day begins be a chord of play and a cord of openness between us.

Let the hour I have to myself in the middle of the morning be a space for reclaiming my breath and honoring right livelihood with a little bit of stillness.

Let the ears I hear my students with be fresh and free of any judgment.

Let the air I share with the leaping deer in the meadow off Mineral Springs Road be clean and salvific, the kind of air that tells its own stories and makes them easy to hear, cool with coming October.

Let me understand my role in the sweep of the day with tenderness and fire, with patience and a lover’s soul.

Amen.

This is something I wrote several years ago and tweaked tonight. 

approach

Tonight was the first night of autumn’s approach. Cool, windy, with wild golden light strobing across the smoky blue of Sharptop and the mountains around it. A rainbow, faint and tall, showed up over to my left as I drove past the Piggly Wiggly and across the train tracks. I went into town, parked my truck on Refuge Road, and walked into the fading light, towards the park and the haunted little pond with the one tree in it. As I walked I realized how hidden I’d let my vision become. I’d stepped away from the expansiveness of spirit with which I’ve always looked at this town, the sleepy little town my mother grew up in, the town I relocated to at thirty. I walked into the park. The tractor show is tomorrow so some men and their families were camping there with their RV’s, their folding camp chairs, and their ancient rusty John Deeres. I waved at the people I walked past and went up past the old county post office, which has been resettled in the middle of the park, and then down to the pond with the single tree. D. and I used to walk here. Of course I walked here before that too but this place has the silent singular energy he can carry. The tree had been pruned or cut but was still there in the middle of the little pond. The water was low and layered with algae. It was getting dark so I couldn’t tell what colors the algae held but I found myself glad that I wondered what they were. I walked through the woods up past the pond towards the firehouse and its big old barn and antique fire engines. I didn’t hang out there but turned and came back to the park and then up into town. This town is almost never in any kind of hurry, but there was a lonesome rush to the wind as I walked past the old county jail and the fountain that I jumped into one Fourth of July a couple of years ago. I had had on shorts and a bathing suit and no one seemed to mind. People waved nonchalantly to me. It was just getting dark then too. A little boy joined me after asking his daddy if he could. The water wasn’t deep. It felt good. I stood under the part of the fountain that brought water down from above and tried to coax D. into the fountain with me. He would have none of it, which surprised me. Remembering that night this evening I felt light and happy, strong and full of the quiet peace this past year's transformation has brought. Nothing is missing. The light is perfect as it changes.

©Laura Sorrells 2012

all rights reserved