Laurel Turner #fibropoet with pencils for legs

 Your unrelenting mercy/ reforms my delights, quells my fight/ to drink what leaves me dry;/ I gorge myself and hunger/ for the bread of life/ whose crumbs always satisfy.// Have I become too tired for life,/ too tired to rest/ to taste,/ instead of being driven,/ too tired to say no? Oh, the hours I stole/ from my life that// You've given/ and given/ and given.// You are true, relentless,/ generous--brave/ and I accept your invitation.// See, I stand knocking at the door. If anyone listens to my voice and opens the door, I will go into his house and dine with him and he with me.  John's Revelation   Laurel Turner c. 1/20/2025

            Jaxyn Laurel climbed/  over the couch arm,/ her eyes dancing toward me/ so I could wipe her nose.// Scrawny stranger sprawled/ across the trapped bed,/ her eyes bulging toward me/ so I could see her there.

 A note sounded the sky, soared, snagged itself on stars-- steadied, straightened, God reached out, hung a chord.

Branches twist/ their backs/ down the cedar stump,/ pulled from under the mountain ash/ by the leaning sun's dusty hands.

…Answer me quickly./ My days vanish like smoke;/ my bones burn like glowing embers.   Song 102/   Air thrashed the leaves in its teeth—/ a yellow-eyed cougar let loose in our trees/ or a pair of golden angel wings/ flapped and warned of something big—/   beyond our fence.   We caught our breath,/ stopped air-bent toward the trees/ already lit with cackles, cries tropical and wild;/ Multi-colored toucans (I told my lover)/   have traded their enchanted isles/ for the Pacific Northwest/. And now, reveled and now, war/ toward the siege against their sacred place/   under the moss arches of our maple trees/ We surrendered, lowered our held hands/ that shrivel and shrink;  These sterile days/ want and waste like an unhinged prostate./    And then,  a fall or leap from the low branch—/ a Goliath of her kind strapped in red crest,/ draped in sable cape.   Her helmet is not her salvation;/...

 Feet twitch, lead scratches against the paper stuck between the covers unanswered, undiscovered. Old December day draws her out into its closing. Sky settled in dips and ditches unhinging Rev's cry so it drifted over fences and kept going. Water crackled in the cedars and steamed in the rain's passing that was now, rushing and rising at the gravel road's end. A stranded frog cleared its throat for the eulogy behind the torn scrim. "Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Mark:15:37-38 NLT  c. Laurel Turner 1/30/2020 New Living Translation  (NLT) Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of  Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. , Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.