Look Closer

What if books could read us back?

Staring from serifed eyes of black.

What if, myself, their gaze could see,
Feeling, thinking, who is She?
My heart too, they would peer inside,

While into other figure’s minds I pry.

Settled in transient omniscience,

My soul is without defense
As Siren script sings sweet to me
Lulling me, stay, pleasingly,
And take pause between the tales and truth,
To hear the joy of undoings, and sorrows of youth.
Unseen faces will guide my thoughts
To unknown places, I’m called to cross.
Heightened pulse, quiet turn,
How else to uncover these things not learned?
Beside the hearth, I sit content,
Ink Muses read my face now bent.
Caught by voices that could touch my heart,
Or riffle through questions of goodness and art.
All the while the song goes on,
Musings from me are withdrawn,
And while I skim, and dive, and sift,
Through my soul’s pages, other eyes rift.
Sirens seem to quell my cares,
And intrigue shades the world’s affairs.
Book-cover doors bind my mind’s inward gaze,
Mirrors flicker with each penned phrase.
Could voices unspoken now read mine,
They know, like Argos, what they would find.

Seek me out and find me lacking, or
Blithely equipped for sharp pens attacking.
The story surrounds, calling stories within.
Measure how endings could ever begin!
By the song I’m drawn to traverse this word,
But I may forget myself before I’ve returned.

By these echoed melodies, hear it, and read:
What grows within this sweetly sung creed?

My Far Corner

{Before}

Warm wardrobe wood will greet me, shyly,
To send me outstretched thoughts of welcome,
But through this unfamiliar mosaic tile,
I shall hardly feel it. I too am at a distance.

The fractured apricot colors may hold each other,
Like the warming smile that would trace dimpled cheeks,
The veins of silver grey stretch outward, to catch
Thoughts held for me in the gleam of opened doors.

But perhaps it cannot send them, across this tender space,
Not yet. Though I may see the tremor of hopeful fingers,
The delicate caress of sunlight is brushed by me aside,
Caught instead beside my feet, in the mosaic web below.

{Between}

Butterfly daughters settle on the soft orange armchair,
Their threaded wings stitching familiar strands of memory
Here, surrounding me and again I am just a girl, beloved.
That ancient wood pillar (unspoken legacy) stands beside,
Guarding our peace in the forest of living yesterdays.

These well-worn wings openly receive me
As I settle into strengthened warmth of the noon sky.
Maternal touch surrounds me, comforts me
Where my tiny, encased cares can spread wide.
I drink it in, between deepened exhales, contented.

I dive below the flowing froth of knobby knits,
The turquoise cadence splashing me with tassels.
The woven waterway easily flows over my shoulders
And into my lap. Tufts escape my fingers, and I laugh.
The embrace refreshes me, and strengthens my fluttering heart.

{Behind}

Delicate dignity alighted from the four corners of my poster bed,
A castle for my cares, with daylight, no longer brushing past.
Its white fingers caught me from the neighboring desk, a release
From my spinner’s wheel of words, where tranquility’s hand
Carried me onward. Straw can still glint like gold in slumber.

A tapestry of beaded bronze and blue hung beside me,
A wellspring of gently swirling color that fell deep,
Deep, into the dreams of memories from lives I never lived.
It dripped below starlight to sing things unknowable behind me,
Following my pathways with quiet, guiding steps.

My chocolate sheets let me unwrap my moments,
And I savor the simple sweetness of their warmth,
A smooth taste lingers as rest melts deeply,
And I forget to remember. I am unwound until
The sun rises to make all things known again.

The Age of Dreamers

What do you want to be?

A fireman. Mommy. The President.

Most kiddos have some idea of what they want to become when they "grow up." (Still a somewhat flighty phrase in my book as I approach year twenty.) I too had my list of things I wanted to be and do, but they weren't all... well, here. That is to say, they weren't all a part of this century.

My dreams, rather than exclusively pulling me toward the future, often ran backwards into the corridors of the past. I imagined what my life might look like if I had been born hundreds of years earlier.

I pictured myself navigating the questions of the American Revolution. Would I be a fiery patriot, or would I sip my tea in silence? Would I lose friends and make enemies, or ride out the waves in placid disengagement for as long as possible?

I thought about the thrill of the Great Depression (yes, I'm not kidding), having to make do or do without. My whole family and I would be thrown into the exciting challenge of canning food, sewing clothes and bed sheets, maybe even raising chickens. I wanted to live in Kit Kittredge's attic bedroom, complete with a typewriter for stories and small window to spy on the happenings of the neighborhood below.

(Confession: Once we had a massive tornado warning in Springfield, Missouri. While everyone rushed around upstairs, I sat by myself in the basement crawlspace for a few moments, excitedly hoping that the tornado would destroy our house. It would be such fun to walk through town and make a new life with nothing but the shoes on our feet. A real adventure! Thankfully, nothing happened to our house, and my imagination found other outlets.)

Sometimes I traveled much further back into the rich ages of Medieval lore. A daughter of a lesser Lord, I would walk the length of our castle, brushing my hands across our family tapestries that hung to muffle the chilling damp of the stone corridors. I would bend over my books, learning Latin, French, and history. Riding my horse on the outskirts of the growing village nearby, sometimes I would spy the swineherds children frolicking and laughing all the day long, without a care in the world. Often I would envy them, only to return home with self-conscious pain. Their life would not always be easy. It wouldn't even be much longer until they would have to join in the hard labor of their parents. My lot was to study hard while I was young, so that I could serve well in coming years.

Then there was the dream of life in the 1800's, probably the one I visited the most often as my sister Aanna and I would don our prairie girl dresses to ride our family couch-turned-covered-wagon, or pick dandelions in the back yard. In that life, I wanted to go west, to find the open spaces where I belonged. I would travel to a little town with nothing but a few pieces of luggage, and there I would become a school teacher, perhaps even marry the bachelor newspaper editor. Between teaching with chalk-dusted fingers, ambling walks through prairie valleys, and a sisterly quilters circle of wise mothers and young friends, my life would be full of contentment, measured with the rhythm of steady unpredictability on that new frontier.

***

Can I tell you a secret? This last dream tickles me so much, because it's true. Today, I feel as if I am living a modern variation of the life I once carried in my ten-year-old head. Though I never would have planned to come back to the place where I grew up, here I am living in the Midwest once again. This time, I'm nestled between green pasture fields and winding gravel roadways. I have the privilege of tutoring three remarkable souls, and respond to "Miss Rebekkah". Wagging-dog-tails follow me when I walk to the edge of the property to mail letters to distant friends. Going into town is a semi-weekly occasion. I live here with an amazing family who show me daily the multi-faceted miracle of individual lives seeking to show Christ's likeness, while drawing that same likeness out of others. This little dream I once held surprised me by showing its face again. I had forgotten all about this childhood dream, and still, I love it.

Perhaps certain childhood dreams are never truly cast aside when we finally "grow up." Maybe they are always tied to a tender place inside of us where they have taken root, if not to come true, then at least to shape who we are and what we grow to become. I am reminded again how intimately God cares, how he sees all. Perhaps He hearkens to these scarcely-breathed prayers we don't even know we carry, and treasures them.

Only God knows, but I wonder if there may be other past dreams I will meet again. Maybe I can hope that castles and village cobblestones will be another distant imagining brought near for re-introductions. My Lord's mastery of the future fills me with such hope! Let it bring you hope too. There are other sleeping dreams that we may still have the surprise of looking forward to, though these all pale beside the dream of being reunited with Christ who came for us. Then, we will finally be in the place where we were made to belong. This is the place of his unaltered, uninterrupted, never-ending presence. This is the greatest dream of all.