Winter Promises Marge Piercy Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby’s buttocks, eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, purple neon flawless glistening peppers, pole beans fecund and fast growing as Jack’s Viagra-sped stalk, big as truck tire zinnias that mildew will never wilt, roses weighing down a bush never touched by black spot, brave little fruit trees shouldering … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 02/11/2016 – Lie to me, sweet garden-mongers
February: Thinking of Flowers Jane Kenyon Now wind torments the field, turning the white surface back on itself, back and back on itself, like an animal licking a wound. Nothing but white—the air, the light; only one brown milkweed pod bobbing in the gully, smallest brown boat on the immense tide. A single green sprouting … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 02/10/2016 – smallest brown boat on the immense tide
from Mary Oliver, "Starlings in Winter"
A Short Testament Anne Porter Whatever harm I may have done In all my life in all your wide creation If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it, And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the old Whom I have roughly dismissed As if I … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 02/04/16 – And all your unimaginable promises
Ask Me William Stafford Sometime when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 02/03/16 – there are comings and goings from miles away
It Is Enough Anne Alexander Bingham To know that the atoms of my body will remain to think of them rising through the roots of a great oak to live in leaves, branches, twigs perhaps to feed the crimson peony the blue iris the broccoli or rest on water freeze and thaw with the seasons … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 02/18/2015 – live in leaves, branches, twigs
Snow Fall May Sarton With no wind blowing It sifts gently down, Enclosing my world in A cool white down, A tenderness of snowing. It falls and falls like sleep Till wakeful eyes can close On all the waste and loss As peace comes in and flows, Snow-dreaming what I keep. Silence assumes the air … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 02/17/2015 – snow-dreaming
The Slate Grey Junco Barbara Crooker with his immaculate bib, sooty jacket, bobs in the snow for sunflower seeds. Caught between two needs, hunger and shelter, he keeps coming back, even as the arctic wind which has howled all day shuttles him like the cock in a badminton game, wind that rattles the windows, shakes … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 1/26/2015 – the snow in great sheets across the yard
Snow Lisel Mueller Telephone poles relax their spines, sidewalks go under. The nightly groans of aging porches are put to sleep. Mercy sponges the lips of stairs. While we talk in the old concepts- time that was, and things that are- snow has leveled the stumps of the past and the earth has a new … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 1/25/2015 – every ditch has been exalted
Snow Fall May Sarton With no wind blowing It sifts gently down, Enclosing my world in A cool white down, A tenderness of snowing. It falls and falls like sleep Till wakeful eyes can close On all the waste and loss As peace comes in and flows, Snow-dreaming what I keep. Silence assumes the air … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 1/24/2015 – a tenderness of snowing
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah 