"Running the Bases"

“It’s okay to think about what you want to do

until it’s time to start doing what you were meant to do.”

from THE ROOKIE

What are you meant to do?

And how do you know when it is time to start doing it?

Unlike weather, the setting sun or plants and trees programmed to grow into their design—predictable, bound with no alternatives.

We have will.

We learn, adapt and desire.

Freedom allows a powerful distraction.

Conflict with other lives and circumstance strains trust

in our individual abilities.

And a lifetime can progress before we are even meant

to address them center stage.

It is not easy.

Still, in the end, knowledge that all life has purpose

grants permission to pursue and discover, and contentment

when we hit the mark.

On Eagle's Wings

How do you introduce a poem written on the occasion of your mother’s death? How do you choose to breathe that level of grief again? I have moved on, lifted the weight that pressed in waking hours and hovered even in sleep.

So I struggle to properly frame what is to follow.
A poem rediscovered safely tucked inside its original note written by a friend of Mom’s and mine whose honesty records the sounds and images of those very moments in the graveyard with gentleness as fresh and giving as the rain.

That is how poetry serves—capturing a series of moments we are unable to fully apprehend in our hearts and spirits and minds until at a later time we can linger, enriched by the truth and vitality sealed within.

It is with permission and gratitude that I share this poem written by Valerie Connor titled, “The Rain Came Softly Falling.”


The Rain Came Softly Falling

Surrounded by remembrance stones,
Across a carpet of emerald,
Chaired on uneven ground,
Beneath sheltering canvas;
Upon our love, Death came calling
And the rain came softly falling.

Mournful whistle of a distant train
Pulling out of town—
This departure beyond mortal bounds.
We stand with our hats of grief in our hands, listening hard.
Unseen birds are calling
In the rain come softly falling.

Ripples spread across the Lake of Souls
And lap over us, caressing our thoughts,
We try to peer into our mind’s eyes
For images of your face, the sound of your voice
the sparkle that lit your eyes,
And gape at the tear left now in our lives.

Prayer words lifted,
Hymns carried on unsteady voices
Squeezed from lump-filled throats,
And plain words quietly spoken to
Hearts brave but broken.
Angels have come calling,
And the rain comes softly falling.


for Carolyn

Valerie Connor
May 2003

There Is a Time for Everything

Surely there is no comparison to soft, warm clothes fresh out of the dryer as someone recently reminded me, relieved to finally not have to wait for clothes to dry naturally. This reminded me of what a family celebration we had when our hand-me-down dryer was carefully inched in its nook tucked beside the washer in my childhood home. How had we managed with stiff, air dried laundry for years? You do what you have to do.

But if our family had never hung clothes in the breeze and warm sunshine, my sister and I may never have experienced running alternately between dangling sheets and dresses feeling the refreshing brush of the cool, wet twist of fabrics. We may never have battled the racing storm-flash as we wildly grasped at sheets and towels throwing wash and pins in the basket together, willing to reach the swinging gate and porch before the downpour. And we may never have tugged with the dog for the piece lazily draped unpinned that fell from the line until we fell back laughing on the ground, hair gathering loose sprigs of dried grass.