Hello, my friends!

I was looking through my blog archives and oh my goodness, has it really been two years since I did a poetry post like this?? Well it’s past time for another one, then! I’ve been storing up a collection of poetry in my notebook for such a time as this. 🙂

Today I have ten new poems for you guys, accompanied by pretty pictures. I hope you enjoy slowing down for a moment and reading something a bit more serious and thoughtful than usual. ❤

A note before we begin: if you’d like to read more of my poetry, click on those links below to see/shop my books. Okay, that’s all I wanted to say. Let’s begin. ❤

have you ever

have you ever
stood in a square of light
and watched the lemon butter sun
drip honey over the leaves?
have you ever
stood stock still
and inhaled the smell
of mown grass
limp and fragrant and cool
beneath your bare feet?
have you ever
snapped the stem of 
a wildflower, feverishly vivid
in the summer light,
or watched the egg yolk sun
slip clearly and silently off the counter,
leaving sharp-winged swallows
to carve up the big plate of
lilac sky?
have you ever
closed your eyes
and breathed in the stillness
and tangled all these pictures
into a flying knot
around your fingertips
and stuffed them in your jean pockets
to carry with you always?
have you?

a world of poems

for a moment, 
i think,
the whole world was a poem.
wouldn’t it be nice if
we could read it always?
but then, we do, sometimes.
is that not what the odd ache is
inside us
at a splendid sunset,
a new spring day,
a bright-eyed baby,
a mountain view? 
all the aching is
a desperation
to put into portable words
that intense loveliness that
catches at our hearts – 
that longing for something
read between the lines,
between the cracks in this earth
and the wholeness of another.
in those moments the world is
a curled-up poem
our racing hearts are
too clumsy to unravel.

frost

last night
the frozen air chilled so
that it shattered
like a pane of glass.
this morning
i step carefully among
the glittering shards
that coat a shivering world
in silver dust,
moonlight trapped in
that broken windowpane
and melting at the sun’s touch
like peppermints on the tongue.
each blade of green sparkles now
with rainbow flashes
along its bristling, icy spine,
and old oak leaves are
rimmed with glitter like
gilded pages from a rustling book.
these chaotic fragments
breathe a fragile beauty
no glass can match.

gas station

the towering sign stands,
a neon flamingo:
one-legged in a sea of cement.
it shines its numbers down
on a bared circulatory system
of red and blue gas pumps,
breathless and without heartbeat,
hoping for a hand.
inside the smudged glass doors
plastered with loud paper
and caps-lock posters,
a dark-haired man sags
on his stool behind the counter.
crashing music softened to a whisper
plays along to his weary thoughts.
his eyes fix on the tiled floor
where squares of afternoon sun
dance patterns in the dust and
cast-off candy wrappers.
a clock hiccups on the wall.
the freezers hum vaguely.
a small cricket inspects a yellow bag of chips.
//
the door opens.

someday

that word holds
a wealth of meaning,
stacked up and spilling over
from a basket of
laced fingers –
white knuckles
blanched with
the choked-down desperation,
the waved-away hope
that keeps trying to
put its paws on your tender, tender heart.
even those light touches
leave bruises –
a delicious, unbearable ache
that shivers into your deepest parts.
and all that longing,
all that fearing,
all that 
waiting, wishing, wanting
you bundle into a quick, small smile
and a swallowed breath.
someday.

tangled

hills and valleys hide
thrills never kept by
flat prairie lands where
all is obvious and seen.
give me the tangled, brushy woods,
the twisting streams,
the rolling mysteries.
let them teach me to
wander life the same:
a divine mystery
waiting to be discovered.
is not God here
even in the most
tangled times?
in him,
the world glows.

the space between

you make me
warm and and weightless
like the snug, small pockets of air
in the space between
my sweatshirt and my skin,
like the space between
the stars,
the space between
two trees. 
the perfect spot to hang
a hammock.
the perfect space to
rest, suspended
on my shoulders,
in the sky,
in the warm summer air,
and feel a comfortable,
dreamy happiness in
being alive.

lovely

beautiful is
something you look like,
but lovely is
something you are.
lovely means
filled with light,
radiant with kindness,
soul-soaked and spilling over
with a rhapsody of simple things.
you can be pretty
without being lovely,
but being lovely means
you are beautiful
all the way through.

all the broken people

…i want to drag it out of them,
set it on the floor
and stare and stare at
the person who is left in the light,
unclouded,
shrinking,
ashamed.
and i want to hold them 
tight,
the way they’ve longed for
all those nights awake
and running.
i couldn’t fix them –
God knows i am
only human –
but i could hold them,
gather them all,
all the broken people,
and hug them for an hour
if that would be long enough
to drain out all the tears
and whisper all the prayers
and, at last,
completely empty and pretenseless,
bury their face in 
grace.

keeping

how is it that i am
so desperate to
keep things?
i don’t mean things like t h a t ,
you know.
i mean things like
flowers and sunsets and songs.
why do i ache with longing until i
pick the flower,
take a picture,
sing the song?
i am not satisfied with merely
gazing upon.
i must,
i must
breathe it in,
twine my fingers through,
and cover myself,
immersed, inseparable,
consumed in it.
i must be 
in it.
make it a part of me, somehow.
because…
could it be because
i ache to be beautiful
with the same radiance i see in those
vibrant bits of life and color and truth?
let me drink it in,
gasping, streaming, breathless,
soaking and dripping and
baptized in the luminous beauty.
for in that shining robe, Lord,
i glimpse You.
and i need You,
woven in my hair
like wildflower stems,
and blazing from my eyes like
clouds on fire,
and spilling from my mouth like
the music from a thousand hymns,
growing and flaming and shouting
that you are mine
and i am yours.
completely and utterly
and forever and eternally yours,
’til death do us join
and forever begins,
on and on and on
with me in your robe of
skies and hymns and
blood on a tree –
twirling, dancing, laughing, free, 
and at last…
beautiful.
//
Savior of my soul,
Healer of my heart,
i am yours
for keeping.
always and always and always.

________________________

***Allison***