Here's A Couple

The Loveseat

She sits in the loveseat rocking chair;
her body still—no rocking, not one bit.
The chair is fifty years olds now
covered in fabric that she selected.
Recovered four times
deep grooves smoothed from the back
the wooden wings taken from each arm.
Can she remember rocking me as an infant
while reading to my energetic brother?
Does she recall the times I lay in her lap
wrapped in her love and my blanket?
Can she feel the years of her sweetheart beside her?
She gazes straight ahead and comments on the gray day
while outside the blinding sun bakes and the air singes.
Her vision is fading almost as fast as her memories.
Her covering has changed and her back is softer too.
The wings of her memory have been removed;
she soars no more.
My feet press against the floor
gently moving the chair
back and forth
back and forth.
I will rock for both of us.
I will remember for both of us.

GATHERING

I gathered rocks all along the way.
Fossiled in the mud beneath limbs on the Jordan
and teetering atop a silent cistern in Shepherd’s field.
Mine was a piece of Peter,
rock of Caesarea Philippi.

I gathered rocks all along the way—
As my toes were baptized in the water he walked on;
repeated washings of the Galilee smoothing every edge.
From the suffocating desert of the traitor;
a place beyond death and lower than life.

I gathered rocks all along the way—
From the quiet garden flowing with whispering trees
and weeping stones.
Near the pinks and yellows, in the shade of the skull
but in clear sight of Hope, I harvested a pebble of His-story.

I gathered rocks all along the way.
I picked up each rock as if,
as if it might lighten the satchel
He carries for me.