Photo credit: j.lewis — click picture to enlarge

A century old, she knows
how to pose, shutters not even twitching
in natural light as the artist tinkers
with perception, vandalizes the stark air 
with voyeurism. She is naked
of snow, leaves, flowers
but beautiful in her simple stance
among curved hills.
 
Maybe her weathered 
boards will creak onto canvas
or a swallow peep through the brushstrokes 
where a nest clogs a slanting chimney.
She is not saying, obedient
to the solemn man now sketching 
wrinkles across her face,
re-constructing shadows 
of memory,

while beyond his vision, 
I’m sure she daydreams of us 
who are watching inside, 
forever waiting to see 
what she will tell of our lives still
moving and moving.

	Previously published in Christianity and Literature and in Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock 2013)
	

Split berries, 
bruised berries, 

plump berries,
yellow-not-yet-ripe berries,
 
maroon-almost-there berries,
give-into-temptation berries,

scattered-sublime berries,
oozing-past-prime berries,

hidden-below berries,
nowhere-to-go berries,

over-your-head berries—
all beads-of-prayer berries.

In the bramble of branches, 
the tangle of twigs,
 
beyond scratch and stain,
the sweet shrub blooms,

its small fruit destined
for discard, dirt, dessert, or

divine intervention—
delicious rote of rosary.

	Previously published in US Catholic and in Begin with a Question (Paraclete 2022).
	

What is foreground and background shifts
by the minute, repositions us in/
out of the landscape we drive toward/
away from. Between temperate and turbulent, 
downpour and fog, the world is still
storm. What we can’t see finally settles
beside us, mist swelling up
the mountain as mystery
and folly, as no choice
but to creep, brakes on, 
down and down, 
and—look: 
the sky.
Praise 
be.