What difference would it have made
if we hadn’t seen God
as separate from us,
safe in a holy heaven
while we struggled here on earth

instead of knowing
we are all made in the image of God
and the presence of Spirit in us
is the over-lighting power
and indwelling love
of our soul?

What difference if we hadn’t seen others
as separate, other,
rather than part of the same family?

What difference if we had known
we are intimately connected
to our planet
and had not used and abused it
as our resource?

Our faith and our world view
can have far-reaching consequences.

The end is like the beginning
they say,
naked as we change worlds.

The journey between
is what we know,
growing our outer and inner lives,
friends, possessions, memories,
substance and spin,
then losing them again.

What lasts?
What is the essence woven fast and deep
that births the waters of death
like a ripe seed?

The seasons have changed.
The woods are wintry,
dark leaves or mud underfooot
and my dog is running, running
through the trees.

Lizzie came scarred.
At home she curled on laps.
On walks she whimpered
and stayed close to our feet.

We thought she’d never alter.
Two years later
and now she’s running,
running,
through the trees.

What is the age of a moth,
fluttering in darkness
and counting days in eddies
of light?
A spoonful makes the measure
of life.

The mosquito counts years
in hours,
egg-obsessed,
seizing the day.
The sloth, though,
is born old,
time trickles through its fancies
like water through rock,
feeding secret caverns
of thought.

Trees’ slow-grown rings
beat time like an ancient clock,
sounding the rhythm of years,
the girth of their growth
gathering the substance of summer.

My growth
is harder to measure,
an invisible garnering of wisdom
and spirit
that can light time,
allowing the turn of the earth
to furnish a rhythm
of fading leaves, stiffening boughs

and fruit.