Shall we begin with poetry?

This morning, I was awakened at 6:45 by the beginning lines of an unwritten poem stirring in me. So I took the time to give it life. I offer it to you along with another one I wrote this summer, after a memorable conversation on a flight from Paris to Budapest. 

A Meeting

Recalcitrant piece of driftwood,

I know your nature to float and flee

     with the ebbing tide, worn smooth by the waves,

thinking you’re finished but really just

          numb.

I looked on you with love when a sapling,

     striving upward toward my light,

Long before the storm uprooted you and

     sent you reeling toward the sea.

Though well-masked by years of tossing,

     your innermost rings still carry my dreams.

Here. In the stillness of our encounter,

I see you as far more than a washed-up, shore-bound log,

     biding time until the next rising tide sweeps you

          into rolling forgetfulness.

If you’re willing, I will lean down and take you in my hands.

Fully known yet strangely unafraid,

     you’ll yield to my soul-sounding gaze,

          your memory stirred by a long-forgotten silent whisper.

Carved by our closeness, what’s dead in you will fall away

and the beauty of your contours emerge

          – a breath of hope to all who see.

At rest from your drifting, I’ll fill you with a new kind of water

          – life unending for the thirsty

                    pouring forth from the vessel of your being
                              as you journey homeward.

Meret's Boots

That leather could surely tell stories...
     of resting after a long walk
          as she sipped maté, mind keen to understand
     her new friends' world.
With heart untuned to the music of walled-in books,
     her feet took to the roads and rails and skies... of Beyond,
Sure, rubber-soled steps shrouding a foundation
     still under construction... her soul like the

     houses she would one day build.
Only One knows if the wonder of a Bogotá sunrise,
     a journey shared with a stranger,
          the hope of footprints left behind,
               and His splendor in the trees
     will give her roots like them
          long after her boots fall to pieces.

                                                         (July 24, 2013)