The Winter Garden

The winter garden,
pared and cleared,
bides in time,
no mind or heart
for hour or day,
nor length of night,
just life in still,
bare-limbed,
cold-clod,
plant and soil;
when of a sudden
air to earth
wings a cardinal,
as if a hinge
of time, of summer,
memory and hope,
seeded in us,
sursum corda,
while we face
the coming snow.

The Space Between

In the confession in Morning Prayer, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, we daily admit our wrongdoing and failure: "We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent." And daily I stop short between these two sentences. Will I cross the space?

A Psalm in Two Questions

Has God in mercy
spared my life
these many years?
Or, just to censure,
mercy spared,
many these years?

Improvisation

A gray catbird flutes over and under, in
and out, the green ensemble of May
in leaf, improvisation of sound and color,
such jazzy measure, as twilight rains.