We hadn’t seen them since the summer solstice. So when they arrived* from California in November, we made up for lost time, celebrating

a birthday,

Thanksgiving,

and, in our short week together,

an early Christmas.

When they returned home, a chunk of my heart went with them.

The afternoon they left, the doldrums landed me at my desk, pencil in hand, scratching “After Christmas” onto a notepad. The poem recently appeared in the winter edition of Awake Our Hearts, an online literary publication “for the female voice exploring faith and life in full.”

A month later, others came to us,* this time from the east coast. Given the cancellation of their March 2020 trip, we hadn’t been together in over a year. Again we celebrated.

Christmas.

New Years.

Family.

Wednesday morning they departed—and I found myself with that familiar Ache swirling through the cavern of their absence.

The same pain in those of you long-separated from people who give you reasons to breathe.

For you, I trust these lines will resonate.

After Christmas

Ache,
your velocity
rises with the drop
in my heart’s barometer.
No windbreaks here, you grow
to a howl in my mown
inner fields—low pressure zones,
short of breath because
those I love have
flown home again,
crossed state lines, and
my arms are empty.

Ache,
you swirl memory through
this hollowed home like snow,
proffer wintry options to
busy me in this
lonely weather.
You tempt me to numb you until
time can ice their visit,
dessicate our togetherness.

Blow past me, will you?
You and those evasions?
I’ll wait.
For Love will breathe
his holy Zephyr,
inflate the void,
resuscitate me with
positive pressure,
indwelling, warm,
as only He can do.

******

* masked, quarantined . . .

And IN AN EGGSHELL, here are my posts from elsewhere, earlier this week:

Leviathan.

“The waters engulfed me . . .the watery depths closed around me . . .To the roots of the mountains I descended; the earth beneath me barred me in . . .My prayer went up to You . . .

And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”

—Jonah 2: 5-7, 10

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Dendrites..

“Say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come . . .'”

—Isaiah 35:4

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Limited visibility.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. “Teacher,” the blind man answered, “I want to see again.”

—Mark 10:51

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Wishing you a 2021 with a sturdy perch…and a sunbath between storms.

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Thanks for joining me, friends. So glad you’re here.

Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks