Somewhere in the late summer garden
that is slowly turning into fall
the way a green fern curls into papery brown,
gently caressing it’s demise,
there is a poem hiding.

I can feel it.
I’m going to hunt for it,
like a leopard stalking it’s prey.

The poem leaps through the garden
like a little mouse jumping in tall grasses.

It’s hides in the little chickadee,
perched on an exhausted sunflower,
picking out seeds.

It sneaks with the sleek squirrel
between the playhouse stairs under the hazlenut tree.

It’s in the late afternoon sun,
breaking through the clouds
and making the white flowers glow.

It’s in the whispy tall grasses
that sway like tipsy paintbrushes.

Poetry parades in the gaudy orange nasturtiums,
holding up their pert round leaves like summer parasols.

There’s beauty in the watercolor rainbow
painted across the sky
as fine rain falls through the sunshine.

Sweet comfort in the sounds of the wood pecker
calling from rooftops, the brown chicken clucking,
the water fountain gurgling softly…

Poetry sprawls across the lazy blue sky
and laughs now the rain is gone,
how we scuttled about putting away things before they got too wet.

It flies in the sun shining silver on a seagull’s back
as it swoops over the graveyard behind our garden.

This poem, which has been calling me for days,
is in the grass, the dirt, everywhere.

And now, having devoured the garden with my eyes, it’s in me.

Perhaps you had to be there
that day at the edge of the forest
to know how my heart sang
at the trilling of the birds and
the sunshine on thimbleberries,
their gritty sweetness delighting
the memory of my tongue.

A stinging nettle prickled my arm
as I reached for ripe berries,
and even this made me laugh
for the remembrance of being little
in the forest.

With that familiar scent of sunshine
poured on green growing things,
that beautiful sky tickled by whispy tree tops…
oh the memory of being young, so young, in the forest!
Alive with joy, my heart flying with nostalgia,
a simple silly madness
that made everything wonderful.

Coming here to the little chapel to visit you, Lord,
after all these weeks,
I feel like a long lost lover reunited…
and I want to cry.

Who am I without you?
Drowning in cares, distracted by worries,
unfocused and befuddled…

I’ve been shipwrecked and
barely afloat, but now I’ve seen land–
I can make it!

There is nothing to say,
because you know everything;
there is everything to say,
because you love me at every moment,
even my worst.

Touch my aching heart,
carry my drooping wings,
help me to soar with you,
embracing all the beauty of life.

Uncloud my eyes so I can see you still,
when I leave this little room,
smiling like a long lost lover,
heart beating anew.