#hendrickschapel

About the Big Picture What love did God recall When He thought pecan? Whose skin, eyes or heart could bear the sweet so well? Only select souls ascertain a need for shell and protection. The hardened and vulnerable congregate to teach each other and decidedly show proof of sanctuary. In community, the safety of love. It takes merely the moon, the honey on the tongue only the pecan can gift. The kiss and nourishment, the flavor of the Beloved's breath. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * On Prayer Rugs Squat at his loom, the rugmaker readies for the incessant chant of weaving. He adjust the warp, fingers tightening ordinary sisal into backbone. He has selected wools from sheep grazed on spring shoots, spun by virgins, steeped in dyes drawn from beet, onion skin, pomegranate, and blueberry. He will blend mimosa silk into the weft, gold and silver will exalt prayer. He intends service, meditaties from first sail of shuttle, left to right. The weaver plucks and twists tufts of color into the map of God, the devotion of each who will sit in supplication is set before him. He must permit no sense of woman praying, the curve beneath black cotton, avoiding her kohl-lined eyes, or flesh untainted and soft, seated on blue and burgundy, gold woven at his hand. No itch should distract her delicate renewal, no burn to grace the small of her back. He must refuse the nectar dream hidden in her lips after her patchouli bath, that tiny cask, blood warm relief. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I am butterfly a garden laid out like a map for my pleasure             states of bee balm      lavender             columbine and violets raise their topographies to me But I wander into the higher mountains             of tree my wings tissue thin      stained glass             yellow panes joined by black night lead I have seen sister snake in her silent flight            through weed and thicket She raises an eye         a tongue to the sumac chenille            overhead bare branches tipped with dried blood of last's year's fruit Later in the season she will shed her skin It will dry as thin            and vulnerable as my wings This morning was my awakening A sun kiss dried me            to take to air a tiny kite in boundless flight My only tether            this short life A bird cries in the distance            like a kitten hungry for mother

I am reminded I have no voice One might think me indifferent as I shift along leaf edges but I have little power            over wind Georgia A. Popoff Community Poet 10-Day Journey of the Heart Digitial Poet-in-Residence