Leaning

She is bent now

like a tree that leans

paying homage to the earth.

She spins yarns of days

on Colorado plains.

She rode fierce on a horse

putting cattle in their place.

She loved a preacher

in a time when a woman,

stood by her man

like a dress in the door.

She was the stronger,
of that he was sure

and we, too.

She doesn't say 

but we know she is ready. 

Her body betrays her, 

and hurts.

She'll leave us adrift

and we'll wonder

if there's life

beyond the leaning tree.

Tree photo by Luke Andrew Scowen Creative Commons via flickr
www.flickr.com/lukeas09

"She" was my grandmother, a towering tree till she died.

In response to an Every Day Poems prompt to write a poem using
the phrase "beyond the leaning tree"

The Gravity of Redemption

I'm a firm believer that the Event in the garden back in the beginning could've ended another way. That the dice weren't loaded in the Snake's direction. But the girl eats the apple and Eden is lost. 

From where we sit, it looks like the Snake wins. We are bent, we are fractured, we are crushed in this life. But Love finds a way.

in the place where light began

the Event was not inevitable

horizon was birth,

not a final death 

a black hole bends all light

around an event horizon

a final luminous ellipse

mocks all light and life

gravity crushes

and swallows whole

angles of radiance

from infinite distances

 

on the other side of darkness

the un-real faces Real

darkness cannot extinguish the light

and Love will not be mocked

Love bends the light

and gathers strands

fractured by the

weight of us

all that has gone before

all traces of the former

are crushed and
swallowed whole

variegated threads

of shimmering light

converge into a brilliant
Singularity

angels of radiance 
from infinite distances
are redeemed