A pair of poems for a winter season

“Let us stretch ourselves out towards him,

that when he comes he may fill us full.” 

~ St. Augustine

The tree across the street,

the one I see framed in our front window,

was slowly losing its leaves,

until yesterday’s wind came.

Now only a scattering of red and orange remain,

exposing a maze of branches

reaching out,

stretching up.

And then there is my heart,

how gradually I reveal it

to me       to you

to God.

How my longings reach out

and then stretch

and stretch up,

waiting to be filled.

And in the spring,

the tree I see in our window shines

in the afternoon sun,

rich with its pink flowers

and its green leaves.

Mysteries of the World II

I remember little girl me

walking up and down

my neighborhood street,

searching the summer sky.

I believed God and Jesus,

Adam and Eve and winged angels

sat behind all those piles of clouds.

Glory peeked through the crevices,

as they watched the world go by.

Heading west on Delta,

flying above the earth,

and resting my forehead

against the window,

I scan the peaks and canyons

and oceans of sunlit white-

waiting to see what’s there.

The featured image is courtesy of Julie Jablonski and used with her gracious permission for Cultivating.

Leslie Bustard

Leslie Anne Bustard takes great joy in loving people and places, whether at church, around her kitchen table, in a classroom, or traveling around. She delights in words, and marvels at the beauty found in the details of ordinary life. Reading, writing, teaching literature, baking, producing high school theater, and museum-ing are some of Leslie’s favorite things.  Leslie is the host of The Square Halo, a podcast for Square Halo Books  and is developing a book titled Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to the Best Children’s Books. She and her husband Ned have been married for 30 years and live in a century-old row house in Lancaster City, where they raised their three daughters.

www.squarehalobooks.com/