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The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Marie Romero Cash

In our time of social distancing, this carved wood sculpture of the return of the prodigal son by Marie Romero Cash reminds us what it means to hold and to be held. A native of New Mexico, Cash works with natural pigments and local woods like pinyon pine to make her folk art pieces, keeping alive the traditions of the Hispanic “saint-makers” who once crafted simply styled holy images for outlying communities in what is now the American Southwest, at a time when religious artifacts from Mexico were in short supply.

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Leaving

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop. —Rumi

The maple, on this wild
October day, lists each leaf
as it leaves. Each one,
perfectly formed in spring
like a green, newborn baby,
is now an old man,
a wrinkled woman.
To say Fall is to tell truth.

 

Preparing for the move

Their house has fewer possessions
than when my wife and I helped
them move in three years ago.

Now we are helping them ready
their home to not be theirs.

I clean doors with baby wipes,
My wife and friends touch spots with paint.

The doors whitened, I stretch
on familiar wooden floor,
wipe down dusty baseboards.

World Series Game 7 is on,
a welcome distraction from grief,
a bat cracking, the breaking of my heart.

 

Forest prayer at a time of uncertain beginnings

I am lifting my gaze
with the lichen, catching
the first golden breeze
off the sun in the sharp spruce-tops.
I am resting it
next to the pearls of last night’s rain,
among fog-white filaments:
willow’s new creation.

I have not addressed my prayer
or my reservations
to any of these. Not exactly. Nor
have they spoken back to me.
Exactly. But I am the one who is trying
not to be too definite.

God, meanwhile,
along with this whole
community of creation
laughs, and plays.

Autumn lament

                   Orange Shirt Day is celebrated across Canada on September 30
                   to remember children who died while attending residential schools
                   and to honor survivors like Phyllis Webstad, who wore an orange
                   shirt on her first day at an Indian Residential School. The shirt

Adult conversion

For at least the twenty-five years I’ve coasted
the dry, arterial freeways of Michigan,
the same billboard has hovered over I-196.
In Christmas-red letters it reads: Believe
on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved
.
Every Friday I drink three beers and fling
myself upon my pillow, soft as the homely
belly of the Buddha. I arrange my debts
and assets like tempered glass nesting bowls
clouded with soap scum. Whoever
leases that sign year after year
would be disappointed to haul up in his net,