Poetry

Strangers and Foreigners (A Poem for the New Year)

Strangers and foreigners of the earth

Lie down

by the River of Zion

Cry out your hearts

to Whatever

and Whoever

Will hear your cry

Who will truly hear you cry out?

The way stretches out

Urging you

to carry on

Despite no one

to lean on

Dim December

looms as shadow

Memories drift

and float like ghosts

like hovering hosts.

January tiptoes forth

with hope

Pathways lined

with spirit guides

Take one step,

Stranger, take another

Aliens traveling

side-by-side.

Strangers and foreigners to the earth

Lie down by the River of Zion

Take my heart as your pillow

Softly now Stranger, to cry on.

“They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth...seeking a homeland.”

Hebrews 11:13

Thankful for what I see

I have been mute.
That is what I see,
as I scan these scribbled pages
my own poetry
scratched and scrawled from
my own heart
Words made up of days and hours,
aches and pains,
sun and showers
I write what I see
what I know and don't know
I write what I feel
When words are just words
yet the simple flow
releases and pours out for me
the stuff of life and death
of hope and futility.
Thank God for poems,
for paper, for pens.
Brief fragments, words strung
together, recording
the passages, the roadblocks
rocks carried and dropped
And precious things:
sweet cat's purr
and dragonfly wings.