Category Archives: Creative Works

A Walk Through Reflections

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It feels like there should be a story in all of this.

I walk along, looking down, thinking.  It’s wet today.  Bare tree branches and patches of mottled gray sky glimmer up at me from between grass blades and shine out of the pavement blackness.  They draw my eyes as though into another world – into the muted, fading new colors and the vast expanse of clouds.  And then- all of that crisp, clear existence cuts off abruptly against an edge, dissolving into submerged ice and green and long-dead leaves.  I somehow find myself surprised.

It’s that other world – that feeling of a story.  Except the story is missing: a story-feel without a story.  So what is the story to go with the feel? Continue reading →

Searching for Marplies

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It’s not often that you crawl back into that unused corner of the attic and find a civilization of marplies, or a kilargy kingdom, or a trivith triad.  And I can’t help but think that’s a pity, because there are times when I’d like to, especially on boring, rainy afternoons.  I know, of course, that it can’t be helped – if things don’t exist, I suppose there’s nothing they can do about it.  I can always wish they’d try, but I do understand.

If they will insist on not existing, though, it would be nice if they’d at least stop teasing me.

Like the time I was hunting in my closet for my other shoe (I usually am hunting somewhere for my other shoe).  Continue reading →

Swallow Dance

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They sweep, a-dance, a trio
Swooping wildly o’er the water,
Darting wingtips washed by wavelets
In the swerving, swirling chase.

They soar, they dive, they rise,
Gliding up above the shoreline
Showing black against a skyline
Soft with opal-gleam pastels.

They hover over color –
Pink and purple, greenish-blue
In a fragment-mix of motion
As the wavelets chase the sheen.

Then again, against the cloud-light –
Coral, blue-green, lilac-gray;
They trace a tie between the two
While weaving lace-paths with their ways.

Of Spiderwebs

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Shimmering silken strands
Shivering, shining in a sunbeam
That slips through shaded boughs
And streams to spot the grass below –

A thousand quivering strings of glimmering
Catching, stretching out the glitterings,
Tracing rough and darkened branches
White with lacy lengths of glow –

What are these but plain and ugly things,
So many spiderwebs ‘mong branchings
Of a single, simple pine tree
That weeps sap-tears to the ground?

Yet they become much more than just themselves:
When o’re-washed with bright cascading,
Clothed a-new with light’s remaking
They’re transformed and glorified.

The Signpost

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I traveled through a windswept waste

Wide weary, dreary-hued and beauty-bare,

When in that bitter, lonely place

A form arrested, held my stare.

It rose to just above my height –

A pole with battered board atop

That shivered in the biting wind

But bade me, even still, to stop

And gaze in hunger at its face:

Wood scarred with etchings deep and old

That spoke in silence of that place…

Drove out its harsh and empty cold.

At last I turned back to the waste

But knew now that I tread upon

A path another soul had faced

And passed. I could continue on.

Fantasy Realm

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New-green, the hills,

All speckle-swirled with white,

Stretch ‘round to bask

In glowing sun’s delight

And duck through woods

Of shadow tossed by trees

That tow’r aloft

To catch the laughing breeze

Which dives to whirl

Through flower-galaxies

A-drape, lace-white,

O’er swells of grass-space green

And, twirling, sets

The starlet flowers a-dance

To toss the world

Their wonder-blushing glance.

Stream

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White of clouds in day-blue sky
O’er-traced with criss-crossed, branching lace,
Set wav’ring on the water’s streaming rush
To yet another place –

Sand and rocks all browned with moss
And tiny pebbles littered ‘round,
Sealed in by mirk-fogged liquid that
Slips ever past without a sound –

Oh, which to see?  Could the world within
This wet, thin-layered atmosphere
Negate the glimmer-hinted realm
That far beyond its depths appears?

Dear Baby

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~ To Ashley and Hannah, who gave me this picture of trust*

I held you, Little One, today,

And you watched the world from my arms.
As so many unknowns
Passed you by on their way
To and fro, you looked on unalarmed.

And I walked and I rocked you,
And you, dearest child,
Slowly settled your weight against me,
Laid your head on my shoulder,
And for the first time
In my arms let yourself drift to sleep.

There you lay, and there I,
In a quiet and deep-settled calm,
Stood and treasured the moments
I found in the trust
Of your rest to give shelter and hold.

And I saw as I held you
That the gladness I felt
Welling up just in giving you care
Could not ever come close
To the joy that God finds
When I trust and let Him hold me near.

Ghost Leaves

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‘Midst branches bare and brown,

With twigs a-tangle in the mist

They float – frail bits of parchment

Traced with wettened water twists

That track to where drips drop themselves

From faded tips to seek the ground

Where all the other autumn leaves

Adorn the dirt, now layer-gowned.

And still the air-borne pale ones cling;

The branch-bound deck their trees with rows

Of whitened gold that sun’s return

Will catch inside and set a-glow.