To Russia With Love

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I'm sending you a gift, Mother Russia. He's sweet and outgoing and hilariously funny. He has a firm testimony of Christ's love for His children. He also has a love for your language and people. Most of all, he has gifts to dispense to those who will listen.

He'll already be frozen solid, and homesick, bone-weary and confused when he gets there. But he'll be working like a freak to figure it all out. I hope there'll be a mother who will take my boy into her heart and keep him safe and fed. I hope she'll get his strange sense of humor and his penchant for practical jokes, though I've told him he has to toe the mark in every way if he wants the aid of the Father whom he serves.

I'm hoping you'll be patient with his lack of understanding. Two years of high school Russian won't go very far. He's a quick learner, though, so it should be not too bad.

Please don't send him your adorable girls. He's got plenty of distractions already. Just send people who want to learn the Gospel and embrace the Gift of the Savior. Send him opportunities to serve you willingly.

At the end of two years, please send him home chock-full of stories and wonderful memories and a greater love for your people. I'd prefer it if you could make sure he's in good health after all that walking and biking.

Your sincerely,
A Weepy Mom Who Loves Her Stellar Son

Numbers Nineteen and 20

April is over and I ran out of time, but I'm going to finish my commitment to myself to do thirty poems. So here are numbers nineteen and twenty:

Glistening and golden

The orb of the morning

Scales the firmament

To spread its glory

Over a bright new day. 

Silken flags

Mauve-tinged

Unfurl

And fill my being

With a gift

Of light

Most Beloved Friend

My Master sat down in the kitchen

His feet were all battered and sore

I washed them and lovingly dried them

While His stories He told, and much more.

He spoke of the publican sinner,

Of the harlot, the leper, the lame

He spun tales of the sewer of seedlings

Of the vinyarder's cleansing with flame.

When our brother was sick unto dying

Jesus tardily came to our aid

I thought him too late with his visit

On his deathbed our brother was laid.

He stetched forth His hand unto Laz'rus

And lifted him from his death bed

The grave clothes He lay from off him

And then Jesus anointed his head.

We stood at the cross with His mother

Our eyes now were swimming with tears   

Though He fainted with pain he was careful

Of His loved ones. He assuaged all our fears.          

I went to the garden to mourn him

I knelt at his stony tomb

The flowers ran riot around me

The air smelled of jasmine in bloom.

The mirrh I would use to anoint him

Lay still near my bended knee

For He was not there where we'd put him

He was gone to His Father, you see.

I wept that He'd left me behind him

This Man who had been my friend

His voice softly whispered, "Dear Mary

My going is in no way the end."

And now I must go on without Him

Finding my way home some day

He'll be waiting with arms out to hold me

I can't wait for his dear voice to say

"Mary, my well lov'ed sister

Your feet, bruised and battered and sore

You've walked dusty roads to find me

Welcome home from your travels once more."    

 

    

 

The Man Beneath the Bed and Other Tales

Poems 17 and achtzehn (18)

 The Man Under the Bed and Other Tales

When I was tiny, just a maid

We had a great bed in which we laid

My younger sister too slept there

We two together, the bed to share.

Four posts stood sentinel 'round our sleep

We scarcely needed counting sheep

The nights were dark, and cold, and long.

At times we shivered, the wind was strong.

Little sister struck with fear

Worried a man 'neath the bed would appear.

He'd grab her ankles, pull her away

And beneath the bed she'd have to stay.

The rule was this: the last one in

Must turn off the light, and then begin

To make her way across the floor

In the dark of the night, clear from the door.

Because of the man beneath the bed

Quenching the light filled her with dread.

She'd start at the light and make her leap

Clear to the middle of the bed so deep.

The leap culminated square on my chest

It was quite annoying at the very best.

I finally said, "If you continue to jump,

I'll make you rue it; from the bed you'll be dumped.

She leaped again, I had to stand firm

So under the bed she had to squirm

For three long weeks she slept near the man

And never again did she need that ban

Fear has a way of doing strange things

To a child of seven when the moonlight sings.

But once you face the man 'neath the bed

No more can the night fill your heart with dread.

(Author's note: No little sisters were harmed in the making of this poem. But she did stop jumping on my chest. And I know it's lay, not laid, but it fit the rhyme.)  

 Cinquain--Fingerless Mitts   

Mittens

Starving writer

Typing in cold

They keep authors warm

 Edgy   

       

15 et seize (16)

Poems 15 et seize (16)

Bee
In your fuzzy gold-strip'd sweater
You dance on warm breezes
You 'do' for the love of being.

http://us.123rf.com/

To Dance

To throw myself upon the wind

To tangle my feet in the lilting sound

To beat a staccato on the wooden boards

To feel my heart keeping time with the voices

To pull more from my legs than ever before

To free my spirit from its old constraints

To weave a love story with my hands

To know love in hearts overture

To dream

Lucky Thirteen (and it's Tagalong 14)

Lucky Thirteen (and me! Don't forget me--14)

One 3--Sorrow
She took off her sadness
Like a worn, faded sweater
Folding it neatly
And gently packed it away,
In a dark, quiet place
For another day.   

Regretfully
There would be 
Other times.
It was always there,
Hidden away,
Lurking,
But ever-present.

She tried desperately
To get rid of it--
That moth-eaten sadness
But she couldn't
Understand 
How to un-make it.

  For the sadness was a gift
From a friend.

He'd look for it on her,
Not realizing
He was the author, 
The giver,
And the binder
Of her darkness.

And the quencher of 
Her light.

Someday
She would 
Take the sadness  
And its bringer
And hurl it away from her  

Smash it to shards
On the sharp edge of
Her anger.

  But that would never be
The end.
   For shards cut.    

       
Or maybe
When she finally understood,
In her extremity
She'd take out
That frayed, worn sorrow,
Gently unfold
And re-make it
Into something happier.
For only then
Would she be
       Free.          

    

           

Fourteen!

Evil Clown

There once was a clown

Who came to town

He turned the circus upside down

He told the freaks

They had eight weeks

To turn themselves into business geeks

He made the monkey

Wear something chunky

And do strange things on the back of a donkey

He changed the rules

He hid the tools

The big top fell down and they felt like fools

The swingers on the big trapeze

Kept falling off and skinning knees

They finally ganged up, tossed the clown in the trees

The clown came again

He was such a pain

From beating him blind, they had to refrain

The clown gave a grin

Said, "You let me win.

You silly fools keep letting me in."

Then the circus got wise

Said, "No compromise."

And they poked him in the googly eyes.

They tossed him out

And with a shout

They sent him away via roustabout

So to this day

The people say

No clowns in their circus are allowed to stay.

Elf and Zwolf

Elf und Zwolf=German for 11 and 12

Flu

I hate influenza like crazy.
Don't care if it lets me be lazy.
I feel like my head
Has been battered with lead,
And my eyesight is definitely hazy.

I was absent when flu was invented;
Instead I made lilacs so scented.
I'd hunt down those guys
Who made flu and house flies,
Make certain their heads were all dented.

There is only one thing not to rue:
That barfing causes weight loss in you.
Doesn't happen with me,
So flu's worthless you see.
Nothing stops me from hating the flu.

(I was going to add a cartoon of my own drawing, but I feel wretched. It would have been really cute, though. Maybe when I can think my way past all this slug slime in my head, I will.)

Lavendar

It's ever so lovely

That one of my favorite colors

Is also 

A most beneficial scent.

Mmmmmmmmmm,

What a scent-sible 

Color.

NINE and 10

Poems NINE and 10

Boxes

Little box 

So cramped I can't breathe

Stuffed in 

 With the lid

Hammered down tight

Tiny airholes

So close and dark

Let me free.

Lift the lid and let me stretch

To reach the sky

Better yet,

Just give me a hammer

And stand back

Best of all,

No more boxes.

 

I Drew a Circle

 o

I drew a circle in the sand    o

o          To keep the others from my hold

The water seeped in anyway

And all I got was cold.                     o

o

I drew a circle round my friend

o                             To keep him safely mine

But friendships grow or go away           o

We cannot rope or bind.

o

I drew a circle round my heart                              o

To keep it safe from harm

o          But all my worry only hurt

The lack was not a charm

o