The View from Jenny's Hill READ READ

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a finalist in a recent Maine Songwriter’s Competition.

10 Mar, 2016

Only One Day

10 Mar, 2016
There is only one day.
The first day.
To be alive on the first
markedly balmy day of the new
year is to feel
a beckoning like instinct
a call to the woods or the seashore.
Invisible hand extends – one finger
curled, motioning.
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16 Jan, 2016

Beyond These Shadows

16 Jan, 2016

Three years ago today, I flew home from a service trip to Haiti. We built a huge chicken coop for a nearby orphanage in the hopes of providing much-needed protein and revenue opportunity for the children and their "family administrators". As the plane left Port Au Prince, and before...

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07 Jan, 2016

True Note

07 Jan, 2016
To which sounds
shall my hardened ears direct
their awareness?

Perhaps the single – no,
repeated – scream of a broad-winged
hawk circling
overhead, lost
from view through clutters of barren
branches or the pleasant
chatter of nearby chickadees.
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01 Sep, 2015

How Then Shall We Live?

01 Sep, 2015

This lump in my throat is my heart crying. These tears that fall silently and then not-so-silently are insufficient motions for an inexpressible grief: One more White Rhino has been slaughtered for its horn made from keratin – the same stuff as my finger nails; another female and her...

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15 Apr, 2015

To My Fellow Pilgrims

15 Apr, 2015
This is what I will tell you: Never again carry an itinerary.
Okay, have a landing pad and a departure pad
as anchors if you must.
But that is all.
Allow each moment to inform the next.
Nowhere to go; no place to be, except
right here
for as long as you decide.
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04 Apr, 2015

Since Galway

04 Apr, 2015
I saw her then
around the hundredth bend since Galway
thumb out
cherub rosy cheeks of youth
in the misty rain.
By instinct, I pulled to the roughened side
hastily clearing the seat of
rain pants, extra socks, and water bottle
ahead of rushed exhalations of thanks.
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02 Apr, 2015

April in Connemara

02 Apr, 2015

On a day when winds are raw, rains insist
on their priority,
and fog is playing stingy
with the view
don’t climb Diamond Hill in some
stubborn display of endurance.
No panorama rewards your foolishness.

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01 Apr, 2015

At the Fairy Ring

01 Apr, 2015

I like to imagine
the carver's desecration halted
mid-letter --
E C \
(was it to be a 'V' or a 'W'?)
by the Fairy Queen herself
outrage propelling her through
the veil to our
dense air.

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02 Feb, 2015

STUDENT

02 Feb, 2015
And I stopped,
heart hammering from exertion
snow shoes resting in deep wells of powder
wind gust rustling the ample boughs
of a Hemlock nearby --
accumulations releasing in a mellifluous whoosh.
A show shoe path through the woods of Maine
And I heard, Are you with us?
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19 Dec, 2014

Come by Here

19 Dec, 2014

(From a guest sermon message at Union Church – November 16, 2014)

I want to share this very human idea that God is someone we call on, or return to again and again, when in fact, God never leaves. It is we who leave. And yet, we ask over, and...

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