Words That Wait to Be Said

Having come to the place where I
no longer wish to be anyone else,
astonished to find I've traveled
far enough to let the children go

and put the old ladder of perfection
away behind the other antiques
in the barn, what needs me now
is joy, roots in the muddy opposites

I live between. Without apology
the outgrown words of hymns
return me to a lost green morning
of praise and clarity.

Nothing asks to be reconciled.
Arguments settle into dirt
and are covered with grass and flowers.
There are words that wait to be said

brief testimonies to singular times
when amazement took and shook me
like some rag doll in the mouth
of a great and gentle dog

that can't understand why the floppy thing
refuses to breathe. It is time
to testify, be witness to revelation
while revelation lasts, and before

my sweet life, everything I know 
is required, to be traded for dust
or light, my handful of stories
told to air, lost along the way.

~ Jeanne Lohmann