What Texture, Your Life?

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SHEDDING

Ah, you’re here.

Hang your age on the hook by the door,

those pilled, worn decades too heavy for

warm weather like this.

Pull the stitches on your hem,

empty out the leaden years, sewn inside,

documents of your flight,

now past.

Here, I’ll help.

Fold all your rememberings.

Put them on the shelf above and

come outside,

come outside.

Bring no age, no garments at all.

We’ll lie on warm moss and

rub our backs on the bark of trees

until sorrows loosen and

dried treacheries rub away in flakes.

We’ll butter ourselves with Yes

until our scrubbed new skin shows

life’s holy texture.

We’ll hunt berries until

God’s breath mingles with our saliva and

we chew and swallow

ripe gulps of hope.

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©Cheryl G. Bostrom

***

Isaiah 43:18-19 – “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

#startingover #poetry #agingwell #forgiveness

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Love the outdoors? I can take you there. Rural & wild PNW posts and photos from a naturalist, faith writer, and author of three books, including the award-winning novel Sugar Birds. Member of Redbud Writers Guild.

22 thoughts on “What Texture, Your Life?”

  4. Love your analogies, especially “fold your rememberings and put them on the shelf”. It is so easy to laden ourselves down with unpleasant rememberings.

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  5. Love the picture(s), love the Isaiah quote, love this post! There is a person in the bark picture; I can see the nose and the eye and mouth, it’s a bit like me, old, gnarled and cynical, in need of God’s grace!

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  6. Hi Cheryl,

    Wonderful wonderful poem.

    A question. Why not “bright red gulps of hope?”

    I will plan to post your poem to my Linkedin in the next two weeks.

    Michael

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  9. Loved the beautiful intermingling of poetry and thoughts. This piece created a lot of visions for me. Thank-you for sharing your talents.

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  11. God led me to read this today. How beautiful. Weeping as I read. It is just what I needed to read today. It is right where God has brought me after 55 years so far. Thanks for being God’s vessel of Hope and encouragement!

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      1. Yes it does. I work with the elderly. I want to move forward and leave the past in the past. God wants us to live in freedom. Many people I care for don’t live in freedom.

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