the seeds fragment tiny in cup of palm and i tuck them in soil fingernails black for the garden, and i can’t stop crying
light from the day wanders window through, i dip my hand in the bag of earth while outside, winter wearies, and there’s something lenten about the way the dirt rubs dry
in spite of tsunamis and nuclear damage and babies with seizures and she’s all i can think about as the infant flowers: cosmos, the four o’clocks, the zinnias bow their heads beneath the water and the soil and i dream of green shoots and leaf unfurling, petal pink and purple but
all i can do is plant and water and pray, i cannot make them grow
and even as i set them by the window i hear her say, “i just don’t know what tomorrow holds” as her baby curls beneath hospital blanket and
it’s the couple with the baby long after eight years, the one with the genetic disorder, and this week, four-month-old cooing child stopped smiling as seizures, the worst kind, ravaged her body like the storm japan’s coast
it’s too much, i tell God, my own storm flooding, they’re bruised–you promised not to break a bruised reed
eight years in, the shoot, green of leaf but stem, bent, appeared and parents, told she would never petal–“they say she’ll never walk or talk or smile again” and this mother, she’s trying to smile but her skin is white
and where is the miracle, Lord?
and her husband, the one whose faith kept him homeless on sundays, he is the one now propping up his tender seedling, the one who, each night, asks his wife if he can pray with their daughter, the one who reminds her that even though their child might not walk, she is so beautiful, and for this they can be thankful and i listen to her tell me this and i whisper, “there, it is” … the miracle in the faith of a broken man
and she nods, and
the garden shifts beneath light and soil damp and an unseen God tender breathes his children to life
(will you pray for this couple, as you have been? this week, so hard, and they, so weak and longing for hope… thank you, friends)
thanking now… with ann…
281. the sunset last night that unfolded, a rose, petals falling across the horizon
282. seeds in soil
283. soil in fingernails
284. spring indoors
285. a husband who buys me sunflower bouquets
286. hospital visits and God wrapped in crib
287. life, in all of its bent and brokenness
288. skype convo with my mother whose tumor has disappeared and whose seizures, settled
289. encouraging phone call from agent
290. the promise of things unseen