One Spring Afternoon in 2017

Outside the sliding glass door,

we sat side by side

in two tan  plastic  chairs  with  faded blue cushions,

on the painted  brick-red  cedar deck.

He wore a gray flannel shirt like he'd worn

years ago building this deck.

His handsomely silhouetted  face  was now rounded

like an overinflated tire from the treatments.

We sat on the deck this last time.

The afternoon  finally warm

 that spring day

after a long sick winter of rain and gray.

We sat in the sun.

We didn't speak.

There was no need.

We just held hands.

Rufus humming birds raced about,

chasing one another,

in their haste to claim the feeder as their own.

As we had raced about for forty years.

A few early purple pansies

 in a painted blue planter,

 leaned their faces

 as if searching for a succulent summer sun.

We sat in the sun.

We didn't speak.

There was no need.

We just held hands.

In This Sanctuary

The oboist plays the prelude.

Her slow, solemn, solo widens

a crack in my broken heart.

Beneath lies a lava lake of sadness.

It is sliced open with a sharp pain from

 memories of thirty years in this Sanctuary:

My children's growth til graduation,

Wednesdays and Sundays in choir,

My first solo,

My in-laws' memorials,

My husband's memorial,

My children's baptisms,

My baptism.

In this Sanctuary,

 I found my faith,

and my own belovedness.

Unable to sing,

 I sit in a chair and listen.

My heart is splayed like a carcass for the grill.It's invisible ink- blood spurts on the church walls,

 and runs down unseen pooling on the floor.

When I walk, it covers the bottom of my shoes.My foot slides, as I grasp for the swaying tether to my faith;

while  the truth of my belovedness,

slips in and out of my searching hand.

I Sit in my Closet

In my pajamas, my arms bare and cooling,

I search for warmth in the vest.

The piled lining on my back

radiates my heat back to me.

I hold the worn duck fabric close, tight around me,

and imagine the scent of him.

The vest has weathered wind and cold Alaskan mornings,

 Oregon rainy afternoons.

endured spills of coffee on early morning fishing and hunting trips,

absorbed smoke from late evening campfires.

 I press the softness to my heart,

as I squeeze the hope out of the morning, the hope out of the day.

 Like squeezing the sweetness in the juice,

 from the grapes in my kitchen sink.