Welcome Judith Sornberger, guest blogger, and author of Open Heart, Wal-Mart Orchid, Practicing the World, and The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany.
Below is one of several poems from a series called “Days of Ash and Wonder”—poems written during this Lenten season. Some are more personal than others, but, as with all so-called “personal” or “confessional” poems, the hope is that they will speak to others, nonetheless.
Praise be to God for birds—
our only flowers in this season,
our prophets of color,
even though the finch’s gold
is only a yellow whisper
in its mustard-gray flitting
But the tulip’s red soars
on the cardinal’s wing
and a muted tea rose arrives
with his bride. And we forgive
bluejays’ appetite for other birds’ eggs
(after all, you made them that way)
when they plant an early tribe
of hyacinth blue beneath the feeder
before, as we all must,
they fly away.
______________________________
I know the cardinal’s not
calling me his beloved
when he appears
like a crimson heart
on an ash-gray day
to tap at my window.
It’s nearly mating time,
and I’m told he views
his reflection as a rival,
that, far from courting me,
he’s calling out a competitor.
But if that’s true, God,
why does he follow me
from room to room, his
hammering a heartbeat
at each pane, as though
he knows how a heart
falters in this dark season?
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