"psalm"

psalm

I give you the wings of an angel
and make you to soar to great heights
unlike icarus
you are free to touch the sun
and I drop the currents of the air
send you to plummet into the cresting waves
and the depths of the sea

it is I who put the air into your lungs
and I will take it out again
you breathe as I will it
as though My hand were around your neck
to crush and release you
as only I desire it

You are My child
and My touch is on you
in the rain
which falls on your brow
as a seal to bind you
to My heart

I will give you
and I will take you away again

I water the garden
but you must work the earth

Mairi Graham-Shaw
© 2013



Image links to its source on Wiki Commons
The Garden of Earthly Delights, inner left wing (Paradise) - Hieronymus Bosch
(between 1480 and 1505)
public domain

"Gently Strumming"

Gently Strumming


She holds the ukulele
like a mother nursing her child.
She bends her pretty face
and sings to it.

It coos back.

I watch and listen:
soft voice,
gentle strums,
halting,
feeling out the chords.

What's next? she looks up to ask
when nothing she tries works.

Try G, I say.
I don't really know what's next,
but G is clean, G is clear,
G moves sweetly higher,
almost fretlessly,
like her.


Carmen Leone
© 2000-the present


Image links to its source at Wiki Commons:
A Kohala Seminary student poses with her ukulele in this 1912 photo.  (1912)
Public domain