A Week of Assonances and Noses

You know how it is when you are young and at the beginning of the book gobbling stage, how you are always coming across difficult words like alliteration and assonance, feeling at the same time that you are supposed to understand what they mean, yet not comprehending their full meaning and feeling embarrassed about it, much too guilty and shy to admit the truth, so going on in life forgetting about the words and living blissfully without them. But good terms like alliteration and assonance do not long go forgotten and hence it was this week that they once again appeared out of the mist and became reality for me, clear, concise, and truly beautiful-- and I had to laugh that not too long ago I stumbled over such delightful terms and let them fall out of my mind just as clumsily. I suppose everything was a little uncoordinated then, limbs too newly long for my body, the constant purple swellings on knees and elbows, the stubbed toes and jammed fingers. After a long calm of several years, this week I once again seemed to walk down memory lane, or rather into it as one runs into a wall with one's head. In my defense, it was a glass panel that did look like a door and who would have thought that my momentum would carry me forward when the supposed door did not move? Who would have imagined that I would have a growing lump on my nose and would topple over a few moments later in a second of unconsciousness? Certainly those details are beyond my comprehension-- but even a knock on the noggin cannot erase the impression of an assonance now: it is firmly implanted.

On Alarm Clocks

A piece of plastic wrapped around a battery... but how often I have trusted it to wake me up, grumpily slapping its top for more time when it does as I have asked. But likewise, who can explain the requested wake-up call of 6:17 on a Sunday morning, the rousing of a sleepy girl just in time to make her 6:30 working appointments, fully rested, and wide awake at that instant without any humanness involved? I do not deny that it still amazes me even after several months of such a refreshing experience, made perhaps more unique by a grateful heart and wonder-filled eyes, less violence, and a constantly tested faith.

Traveling Companion

I am no mechanic, but is that
An alternator belt
Chattering beside me as if lonely
Sick of traveling alone?
Hear her squeak that she is tired, weakened,
Frayed,
Demanding reinforcement nearly
At the end of her toils.

Somehow her niche seems familiar,
Amidst the churning parts
And dark greasy bolts of her world complaining
Screaming to see the light of day
In moments.
But today I am silent
Listening to her grinding,
On the way to an empty dorm room
And quiet.

White Mountains

It is amazing how small and insignificant one can feel, sitting amongst these huge protrusions of rock, soil, and trees, under the vast expanse of a blue sky and drifting clouds. In the same way, one Sabbath on Cannon Mt, glorious though it may be, is a fleeting thing in comparison to Eternity... but still... the one moment is special, just as I, in the eyes of God, am unique and loved in my miniscule self.