Tag Archives: beauty

Icons, Part Two

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image by Joel Brotzman-Gonzales

image by Joel Brotzman-Gonzales

As far back as I can hear in my memory, I have known the call of the mourning dove. From the time I was a tiny little girl sitting on the front porch while Grandma did the early-morning watering, to this morning forty-five years later, sitting on the back patio after doing the early-morning watering, that melancholy, infinitely soothing three-note trill has sounded in my ears, as familiar as my own heartbeat and sometimes as unnoticed, and as centering and reassuring when I listen for it. It is perhaps as close as I can imagine the voice of God, murmuring over and over, “I am here, I am here,” here in this world that is bent and broken but never abandoned; swollen with sorrow, swallowed up by joy poignant as grief.

Song from Pippa Passes

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image by Rebekah Choat

image by Rebekah Choat

The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn:
God’s in His heaven—
All’s right with the world!

~ Robert Browning, born May 7, 1812

Good Omens

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Rain fell today through shining sun,
and the season’s first hummingbird
drank deep, unafraid, just outside
the kitchen window.

I believe these are good omens.

~ Rebekah Choat

Rain Reflections

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image by Rebekah Choat

image by Rebekah Choat

Dirty old alley
Pools of water left standing
by a morning rain

Placid reflections
of azure rain-washed skies
above traffic’s noise

Room to fly freely
without thought in the heavens
with clean air to breathe

Open skies mirrored
in pools left in the alley
by a morning rain.

~ Rebekah Choat

The Memory of Stars

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I’d like to tell you
my earliest memory of stars:
dozens of dozens of diamonds
scattered freehand
on a velvet midnight sky
above a gentle sea,
the delicate acoustics
of salt and sand and surf
supporting the soaring chorus
of the Pleiades.

I’d like to tell you
that’s how it really was —
so much lovelier than
bits of gilt paper
and paste stuck carefully
into squares within squares
on the beige Sunday School wall.

~ Rebekah Choat