lightning

fireflies in the woods
flashing points of vivid light
mocking the Smartphone

lks 6/26/15

approaching the blaze

Remembering
the shy dream
of your Presence,
I savor a tender
spinning, which
keeps your obscurity
distant, your response
an imagined
shiver. How can I
approach the abiding
blaze of your Body?
Only in a secret
life of abandonment
and love. Only the
speechless for-
ever of your
absence can make
me whole.

©Laura Sorrells 2014
all rights reserved

an empty room

Your touch is both
circumference and
question. A bell,
a door, an ever-
lasting hour,
a shattered night,
an empty room,
the perfect light
that ravishes all
my little plans
with its wild
and holy
silence.

----©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

light's attention

Mountain laurel
glows in light's attention.
Every minute
seems to wait
on the wind
to trade in winter
for the humming
urgency of
bees.
----©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved

This was a found poem, culled from Dave Bonta's blog The Morning Porch and the responses to it.

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

A certain gentle light
can carry everything
into the desert
my soul returns to.
Without you,
no flame of love,
no tree of blessing
reaching across the
hidden field of night
to breathe me
quietly home.

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

Watching the light in
a summer garden, I notice
how a cathedral of unexpected
geometry reflects its
living heart.
Without everything here,
(and elsewhere)
the improvisation of reverence
would be lost.
What other weather
is there?

©Laura Sorrells 2012
some rights reserved


I wrote this found poem using Nicholas Harberd's book Seed to Seed: the Secret Life of Plants.

softer than

The language of slipstream and bridal veil
slides across some holy threshold,
a breath softer than the Spanish
songs that punctuate my dreams.
The patience of God shivers
in the ordinary shapes of grotto
and fern, dusky and wild
like the mystery
of rain summoned by prayer.
Everything is willing to be itself.
Whose forever can hold
such sweet chaos,
such grace?

©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved

shine and crackle

The dark slope of lawn did not catch, did not need to catch the yellow light of the full Easter moon or the orange glow of the pinwheel sparks ascending skyward from the little pyramid of lumber smolder on the grass. Things were already burning when I got there. The peaks of monks' hoods seemed to hold all the secret energy of the world. The candle they lit for me singed my knuckles with its crooked tumble of white wax. I didn't give it room enough above the sphere of paper and it became a truncated stub too soon. Still it flickered beautifully for awhile in the brightness of the church. The heat within moved outwards and I stood with its scorch until I could not any longer, weak in the knees and dizzy with strange light. No one else seemed heatstruck, lightstruck, candlestruck, or stuck in any way. They stood and sang and held their candles easy: calm and fresh, clean, awake, uncluttered or confused. I wanted the wood of a choir stall to cling to, to lean against, but only air was there. A negative space peopled with shine and crackle, ache and arch. My candle died and I did not know what was happening when someone offered me a flame to wake it up. The light above me was very bright and I tasted salt the way you do with nausea but no nausea came. My heart warmed on into my throat and kept me upright. Warmed and cooled simultaneously. Synesthesia at play in the fields of the Lord. Dizzy but strong, I listened to the blue air come alive, watched the psalmody sing itself into the morning, tasted the scent of myrrh in the swing of the censer, dreamt the cold metal sides of the folding chair my fingers clutched was a cradle, an empty tomb, a big stone rolled away from a space no longer needed.

even a sky

Somewhere between
this tag of words
and the place
it's never been

a window frames
what shines like water,
but could be
anything,
even a sky.

--lks 2009

This was the first of the found poems I've written using the magnetic poetry kits.