The 2012 Fern Creek pullets are 3 weeks old now. So quickly they grow compared to humans! Their world is still rather small--confined to a 3x4 foot cage with a perch, a thermometer they play with, food and water. We're keeping them as warm as we can under heat lamps in the garage until their feathers have matured enough to house them up with the hens in their separate pen. The world will still be rather small until they are big enough to go outside. And then, what wonder awaits!
I received an email from Keith Seckel, from The Orchard Community which is a house church in Salem, giving me a heads up about someone in Ireland looking for John Shea poems. He found Sharon's Christmas Prayer, which I posted in December, and sent me a link to a Shea poem he had posted. After sitting with it I decided to pass it on here. One of Shea's collections includes both these.
A PRAYER TO THE GOD WHO FELL FROM HEAVEN
~ By John Shea
If you had stayed
tightfisted in the sky
and watched us thrash
with all the patience of a pipe smoker,
I would pray like a golden bullet
aimed at your heart.
But the story says you cried
and so heavy was the tear
you fell with it to earth
where like a baritone in a bar
it is never time to go home.
So you move among us
twisting every straight line into Picasso,
stealing kisses from pinched lips,
holding our hand in the dark.
So now when I pray
I sit and turn my mind like a television knob
till you are there with your large, open hands
spreading my life before me
like a Sunday tablecloth
and pulling up a chair for yourself
for by now
the secret is out.
You are home.