To a Child Too Soon Grown

When you were very small
with thumb and tricot never far
from your lips,
I would brush the hair
that tangled in your lashes
with my fingertips.

You would smile with chubby-cheeked delight
throwing stubby arms
around my face
in an open-mouthed, wet
toddler-tight embrace.

I would hold your squirming
to my heard, and you would start
to pull away
your little brain already chugging
toward the next stop-plop
like a two-year-old, diapered train.

If I had only known
you'd travel faster than a baby's breath
from those days to these....

If I had known you'd glide
from child to woman like a breeze
from earth to trees...

I would have held you close
a moment longer
trying just to make it last
long as a lollipop.
I wouldn't stop
as precious seconds passed.

But you would be already off,
bouncing baby fat from my lap,
to the floor, to the door
to the day...


hurrying away...

hurrying away....

Becomes a Man

-a day of confession*

My son goes to the high place
to lay his burdens by,
to give away his sins to know Thee.

You and I,
mother mortal and Father God
have watched the path
his feet have trod...
we've walked along
and stepped aside,
we've picked him up,
we've prayed,
we've cried...

And now he kneels
on hills Thy hands hath made
and at the rocky altar
sheds his sins
like so many thin, crackling
worn-for-too-long skins.

The Heavens rain tears of joy.
The sun smiles down upon
what used to be a boy.

He stands up
unafraid.

This is the day
the Lord hath made.

*D&C 74:7

Lord of the Harvest

The wheat grows side by side
with the tares
and side by side with the wheat.

Sometimes they seem a single plant
and sometimes they barely meet.

What seeds are sown are sometimes known;
Sometimes seeds blow with the breeze.

Sometimes the gardener is worn
to the bone,
and sometimes she’s on her knees

tending the tender shoots and stems,
blowing away the chaff.

Sometimes she wanders
the rows alone,
sometimes on the Lord’s behalf.

Sometimes she reaps just
what she has sown.
Sometimes the weeds appear.

The difference between the wheat
and the tares
is often a little unclear.

But the Lord of the Harvest
holds each in His Hands,
along with the prints of the nails.

And blessed with His holy
touches of Grace
the wheat, even tattered, prevails.

God bless the gardener who gently tends,
and God bless the weary,
the strangers, and friends

who comb through the golden tresses of wheat
and find what is sacred,
Celestial,
and sweet.

-swestenskow 4/3/08

Undone

We used to be

a perfect match

like two parts

of the same clasp

on a string of imperfect pearls.

Since you left

I feel

dis-

connected

and it was so

unexpected.

Husbandry*

In anticipation of the fire and the flood--
of the hunger, and the younger ones
who bear his flesh and blood--
he rises, while the moon
is shaking loose her lucent tresses.
He showers. In the leaden
daylight-birthing hours, he dresses.

He mans the stands of saplings,
kissing bark and branch with axes.
He flexes, tenses, reaches, scatters sawdust,
then relaxes.
He chops, and stacks, and packs
and splits the sticks that feed the fires.

He teases, and appeases,
convinces and conspires
with the snakes and snails and spices
and the sugars that he sires.

If it seems he tackles far more
than the job description calls for,
he also misses, kisses, listens to
the girl he daily falls for.

The care and keeping of a household,
husbanded and grounded,
is mastered by the master
of the castle.

I'm astounded!

swestenskow for her husband on the night of his trial by liars

*hus-ban-dree:Funtion: noun, Date: 14th Century (archaic): the care of a household