daily bread

the screen door bangs behind me

as if i had been shot out of the house...

it will take awhile, this new arrangement.

her words follow me like snarling dogs...

she is angry because she is not dead.

her perfect little 98 year old body

mocks her will.

blue-veined hands clenched

she berates her invisible tribe

why can't she die, she wants to know--

how hard could it be?

so it goes. minutes tick by. quiet comes.

she sits there in her elegant bones

muttering as she fingers the crinkling pages

not so much praying the scriptures

as loading in more words

to hurl back at heaven.

my wilted lettuce, having read mary oliver's 'Walking to Oak-Head Pond...'

i.

what could i possibly hope to turn up

that would count

after trudging around in my daily swamp

to compare to mary's words

already dancing about like freckles on a forest lily?

ii.

must i gaze upon her plummy stanzas

while i sit with my morning raisin?

hell.

she has sucked out all of the goody

nothing hangs in the air waiting to come to me

my spirit is off mooning over her substance,

and my will is lost to the soft pleasure of her phrases.

the languid hours of silence before me

reach out to hold my wilted lettuce on a twig with two fingers

iii.

so here sit my little ciphers

with all the crispness of cobwebs,

waiting for an unwary gnat of praise

while her words already recline

in the splendor of gods,

lolling about on the well-lauded page

iv.

'think i'll swat flies
and then take a nap

birthdaypoemicals for fr don legge

i.

the goodness you are gifted with as

lifestoryteller of hurt and grace

is a lovescarred and suppled heart...

you are a born priest, not a made one--

your hands are holy from brokenness ...

you are the light of the prayers you

pray

and spiritual shepherd of those whom

you bend to kiss on their journey home

ii.

all that aside, love just breaks out of you 
until we're plum pecked to pieces by you

...you 'bein' such a shiny 

smiley-beaked,

yellowfeathered

furballness,

chirpin and laughin
and love-spreadin

all over ever'body

all the time