Something Magic

There is something magic in the quiet of winter mornings after snow has fallen in the night. There is something sacred in that early hour before cars or snowplows, or even joyful children have broken the silence. On these mornings all the world seems perfect and new. All the earth seems waiting for something.

Several years ago, on one such morning I found myself awed by the beauty of winter and surprised by a peculiar thought: How much does all this snow weigh? And how does the earth bear it? A second thought followed closely behind the first: How much does one tear-drop weigh? And how on earth do we bear the weight of our sorrows?
I found myself imagining millions of unique, perfectly formed crystals falling from heaven to earth; then a myriad, often invisible heartaches laid in careful layers over the human heart, perfectly formed, perfectly placed as gifts from heaven. Like snow, these gifts may burden our lives, but they are in their own way beautiful. These heartaches give us experience, teach us compassion, patience, humility and love. On that quiet winter morning I felt an awareness of a God who sees every snowflake, every sparrow, every single teardrop fall. This God knows that we, like the earth in its winter white, are perhaps weighted, perhaps waiting for something.

This poem is a draft that came from that morning. Some of you may already have read it. Thanks for reading it again! Maybe it's not quite finished, nevertheless, it is my Christmas gift for whomever may visit this blog.

Merry Christmas and God bless.


Something Magic

Snowflakes fall in single file,
combine to weight the earth
and man
with tons of frozen moisture.

So too our sorrows come,
yet one by one they
lift from heavy hearts -
with time
and God's abundance.

El Niño

Twenty six years ago today my son was born. Happy Birthday, Luke.

I have only one. This son. "The boy." He's mentioned once or twice that it wasn't particularly easy being the only son.He has told me several times that being the middle child of three in this house of women was additionally hard. I do not doubt him. I do not question the difficulty of his life, this son, this middle and neglected child; this rock of the masculine juxtaposed against a river of femininity.

He never had enough "man food" to eat. I fixed "girl food." We ate in girl-sized dishes. Sometime in his late teens I realized I needed more meat on the menu. Sometime in his twenties, after he was living on his own, I gave him a man-sized cereal bowl and he thanked me. It was the least I could do and long over due.

This son, this only man of my children told me recently that he misses me; that he misses parts of me that seem to be lost. One of those parts is the part that writes. It isn't really a part. It is something in my center, my soul, my truest creative self.

It seems I have been hiding out for reasons that I am just now coming to understand. And it is this neglected, underfed, middle child man who hollered down the hallways of my mother mind to say, "Mom! Where are you? Come out and play!"

He has drawn me out of myself in an act of love -- in spite of my apparent neglect of him and his boyhood needs. (What he said, among other things was, "You need to blog, Mom. You need to write! Enough is enough! It's been too long.")

I owe him a great deal for that. I owe him an Ode. And here it is.

For my son.


Ode to El Niño*

From somewhere south of love,
Luke brings himself: a winter storm,
wind from heaven, he flings himself to
earth on cool morning. Then, with his breathy cry,
a warming trend, forecast of goodness.
I set aside billowing pink,
swaddle him in blue-sky, sing lullabies,
delighted to mother this boy.
I mark time by my rising, setting son.

He climbs, plays, glides in pillow case capes
over imaginary waves, casts shadows -
a sundial on the shore of my heart.
He wears me thin with wondering,
builds forts, mixes potions, paints pictures on walls,
finds questions in rainbows, answers in rain.
He watches the day for what comes soon,
waits at dusk for the tidal moon.
Centering himself between sister hemispheres,
he steadies the world - Ecuador,
invisible ribbon, invincible string.

Changing seasons move him further out to sea,
bring him home, pull him again away from me
to places where he finds new eyes
for beauty; tells truth in images
splashed with vivid hues or
grayscaled black and white.
He lives his name, shapes the light.
He changes the climate of my days,
alters forever the current of my life -
this child, this man, El Niño.


*The El Niño-Southern Oscillation is often abbreviated as ENSO and in popular usage is commonly called simply El Niño. El Niño is Spanish for "the boy" and refers to the Christ child, because periodic warming in the Pacific near South America is usually noticed around Christmas.[3]