An Offering Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

She summons the wind and the rain,
plucking clouds and petals of gray.
She is tired but does not complain.
The needle threads another day.
A shadow ripples in her eyes,
a gentle tug, a hidden lake.
A sad wind moans and gently cries
in the ghost of memory's wake.

He touched her soul; she touched his heart.
She wanders the distance between.
No kiss of love nor thought impart
the brief glimpses of evergreen.
Fragments fall to overflowing.
He is the same, both now and then,
secrets kept, a gentle knowing,
the ever after never been.

She weeps into her pillowcase.
A prayer rises as a bird,
and language finds a special place
in an offering made of word.
A poem made of scarlet ink,
a redwing keeping its vigil,
a precious gift, an interlink,
a tribute, and sacred sigil.

Night by light of the willow moon
spills through hands of a silent saint
within a churchyard's dark commune
beneath branches of low acquaint.
Nothing remains among the dead.
The earth is split; the sky is torn.
The heart becomes a watershed,
and a rose bleeds beside the thorn.