I don’t know how we find ourselves 
sitting together in the yellow kitchen
of the Writer’s Retreat. 
You’re rocking in the wicker chair. 
I’m pulling loose threads from my bathrobe sleeve.
The room expands, contracts with our syncopated breathing.
Through the window, early morning 
fills the pages of our hungry notebooks.
Outside, tulips and daffodils ready themselves to bloom,
ignoring the Chicago gray sky. 

Suddenly you turn to me and say
it’s odd how the coming of spring displaces us.
I say poems try to unbalance all the in-betweens;
how words carry the weight of holiness
like seeds in the belly of a sparrow;
how God can shine through ordinary of days.

Then, all at once the whole room shakes—
your fist rattles the table; coffee spills out of our cups. 
My hands flutter in my lap like the wings of a bird 
trying to escape its cage. 
“You can’t know this!” you snarl. Outside a tree limb cracks
from the weight of too much ice. Now I understand
it’s you who are so very certain

I have God in my pocket, wrapped in cellophane, 
a treat for the ages; 
like I’m keeping the Almighty all for myself, refusing to share—
like the Host of Heavens & I are best buddies, 
snickering at you like mean school girls— Poor thing. 
This I didn’t say—

once I stood on a street corner 
with pizza box and cell phone in hand. I turned
and heard autumn light falling through golden leaves.
And like the after hush of wings taking flight,
my heart took in that stillness 
settling deep inside me and it grew
beyond belief.