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

The Kiss

The Kiss

How could I have known
this every-morning kiss goodbye
would be our last...

An ordinary moment
much too soon became our past...

I don’t know what to do...

These unfamiliar duties
so grievous and so new...

Then I feel the whisper
of your spirit brush my brow
and angel kiss that comforts me
for now...
11/29/2001

The Giver

She gives like the river,
all of herself,
her moisture, her minerals
her earthy wealth
asking nothing in return
because she’s learned
there’s rain in due season,
drought for a reason,
a little rain, a little sun,
and plenty of room for a river to run...
She offers her arms from east to west
north to south, and all the rest--
fingers healing thirsty flowers,
rivulets that wind for hours,
nursing both the new and aging,
some of her at peace
some raging,
unaware how vast her reach,
how essential she to each.
She supplies the Maker of the Rain
to drink her up to rain again.
She offers all
is filled again
by her sacrifice to make the rain.
She nurses mosses, suckles soil
anoints the parched and dry like oil.
She nurtures grazers, grasses, trees.
She trickles to those,
she thunders to these...
She’s been to the Living Water’s source.
She’s felt Its ebb, Its pull, Its force.
Of course, she knows its endless supply
she carries from sky to earth to sky.
In flood and drought
she does not doubt,
She flows on prayers.
Everything she has
she shares.