Surprises

snowdrops in late winter

Falling tops my list:

The slow motion and broken teeth of it

More carefulness after and bills for reconstruction

Next are rear-end collisions:

I draw them like magnets BANG 
And pay with nerve damage after

Revelations follow:

Learning that God is on the cross

And doesn’t cause but feels pain

Gods are always hungry:

Our God is hungrier to manifest

And visits often to see us in action

Winter to spring, too, always

Astonishes, the melting mercy and

Softness with scents of flowers

Posted at Poets United Poetry Pantry #187.

Copyright © 2014 S.L.Chast

Going With the Flow

Sleep eluded me for the last two nights.

No surprise then when today’s nap lasted

a full eight hours. 

Dreams demand their meetings.

If only I could wake aware of them

meetings and dreams would have more impact—

or maybe not.  How

to know God’s intent?

Ministry is hard enough to discern

when fully alert in prayer meetings

and expectant of

hearing messages.

Drinking at the well, I don’t hear water

giving permission, but perhaps pouring

into my cup and mouth

is permit enough.

Lucky me who has time to obey

inconsistency as it rules the day.

Posted in Poets United  Poetry Pantry #184.

Copyright © 2013  S.L.Chast

What We Carry

San Francisco fog with the Golden Gate Bridge in the foreground
and the San Francisco skyline in the background.

Let us talk about the dust of years,

the sands of time and the difference

between dust, sand and fog.  Weight matters.

Once while sunning on a sandy beach

on the Pacific Ocean I slept

and woke to a thick fog that erased

Everything.  (See that stanza break? 

How scary to move past it without

sight!)  Contours of the shore walked me home.

To the car, actually, where I gasped,

slowed my pulse, licked the blood off my lips,

prayed thanks and shook sand out of my shoes.

The fog did not stick like the sand did;

I escaped it but still felt sand grit

in my hair and ears, still swept it up.

In the car, especially, I think

of that fog when I hear sand bragging

from the corners and cracks where it lies.

The dust of years covers all of this

now.  I've stopped competing with it for

possession of mere things and times past.

I let go of dust and sand, carry 

them no longer through foggy spaces—

experience is weighty enough.

Posted for 

Poetry Pantry #181

 at Poets United.

Copyright © 2013  S.L.Chast

Natural Light

[show]Winter Sunshine by László Mednyánszky (1852–1919)

 Photo by Szilas at the exhibition in the Gallery of Judit Virág, Budapest

Natural light varies by latitude

and season, making artificial light

and dark more or less necessary. 

What is your slant and when do you cast your

longest shadow?  How many candles does

it take to celebrate the Holy days?

Holy days vary by latitude, too,

and longitude and mineral rights

making playtime more or less relative.

Think of which trees grow in your Holy days. 

Are evergreen, banana, oak or cacti

most prevalent?  How does your garden grow?

Mine glows, reminding me of when I was

surrounded by most light, when I used to

run in the wind, when it was safe to sun.

Posted at Poets United Poetry Pantry #180.

Copyright © 2013  S.L.Chast

Falling in Love with St. Francis

Saint Francis in the Woods - Albert Bloch, 1927

We hang-glide in the Apennines

     where he walks in dense leaves

swallows swoop to see him pass

We follow trails he blazes

     paved by centuries of walking

hermitage to wooded peaks

We kiss to touch our hunger as he feeds

     birds and wildlife and gives

            all to lepers and the poor

We kneel face to face and brave time

     where he praises Sister Earth and Brother Sun

and gilds altars for transubstantiation

We lean over Italian-English dictionaries

     he reinvents theater as presepio

            live crèche in fields with animals

We each take him home in poetry

     his prayer in our hearts as we

            pack our bodies into suitcases

Re-posted Written Saturday for Karin's Poetics Italian-Style at dVerse Poets Pub. Re-posted Sunday at Poets United 

Poetry Pantry # 171.  Find the poems of St. Francis HERE.

Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast
Chosen for book 11/2013