Jeanne Lohmann

butteredtoast

,United States

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Vine and branch we’re connected in this world of sound and echo, figure and shadow, the leaves contingent, roots pushing against earth. An apple belongs to itself, to stem and tree, to air that claims it, then ground. Connections balance, each motion changes another. Precarious, hanging together, we don’t know what our lives support, and we touch in the least shift of breathing. Each holy thing is borrowed. Everything depends.

Shaking the Tree

Praise What Comes .

Day ends, and before sleep when the sky dies down, consider your altered state: has this day changed you Are the corners sharper or rounded off? Did you live with death? Make decisions that quieted? Find one clear word that fit? At the sun’s midpoint did you notice a pitch of absence, bewilderment that invites the possible? What did you learn from things you dropped and picked up and dropped again? Did you set a straw parallel to the river, let the flow carry you downstream?

surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs you never intended. At the end there may be no answers and only a few very simple questions: did I love, finish my task in the world? Learn at least one of the many names of God? At the intersections, the boundaries where one life began and another ended, the jumping-off places between fear and possibility, at the ragged edges of pain, did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

Questions Before Dark

Jeanne Lohmann uses these poems to emphasize the importance of appreciating the natural gifts life has to give. She also wants everyone to reflect upon the impacts they have on the world, just as the many little things impact them. Our Creator's most important gifts to us are not always found in the most joyous or outstanding occurrences; they can be found by understanding the importance of EVERY moment, no matter how minuscule it may seem.