Today I’m sharing my seven poems from Week 2 of the Writer’s Digest Poem-a-Day Challenge. I got a little behind, so some of these weren’t written on the actual day of the prompt, but they were all written this week. Thanks for reading them! 🙂

Day 6: Praise

“Where the Wild Things Are”

Glory be to God for hawks
who live in the suburbs,
feathering their nests
with dryer lint
and perching on streetlights
cut from indigenous pines.

They are everywhere,
the wild things,
offering the business of their lives
as an act of worship
and reminding us
that the great rumpus of grace
begins in the hearts of those
who consider the birds.

**Based on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty” and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

Day 7: Days of the Week

“The Lord’s Supper”

On Sunday we took communion.
I broke off my own
morsel of bread
and held the cup myself.

I waited for the cue to partake,
trying to fix my eyes,
and align my heart,
and refocus my soul.

After we prayed and ate,
I lifted the cup to my lips,
surprised to find it full
of real wine, not grape juice.

And I suddenly wished
I was more like the bridegroom
who saved the best wine for last
without planning ahead or lifting a finger.

Day 8: Thing Poem

How many high school hearts
are buried beneath the bleachers
where they broke and fell
in pieces
while the band played
slightly out of tune?

Day 9: ____ if _____

I’m here if you need me,

but I’d really love it if
you came to me first
every once in a while,
or if you trusted me
to act
in my own time
and in my own way,
instead of turning
again to the wheels
in your mind
that run on and on,
but get you nowhere—
a cart without a horse.

Day 10: Going Somewhere

As Bonhoeffer said,

When the confusion
of accusations and excuses,
of desires and fears
makes everything obscure,
we search the depths
of our hearts,
finding that we are unfathomable,
even to ourselves.
We cry aloud because
we are lost;
we don’t know where we are,

but he does.
He sees quite clearly into all our secrets
and comforts us, saying
“In the end,
all doings
and all actions
will be made perfectly clear,”
because at the heart of it all
he finds a name
which he himself has inscribed:
Jesus Christ.

And just as he sees our hearts,
one day we will see quite clearly
the depths of the divine heart,
and there we shall be able to read,
no, to see,
a name: Jesus Christ.
One day we shall know
and see
what we believe;
one day we shall hold
a service together in eternity.

*For this poem, I’ve taken some of my favorite Bonhoeffer quotes and arranged them into a poem

Day 11: Luck

Is it fate or luck
that I went from one
coffeehouse to another,
looking for quiet,
and an empty table
with easy access to electricity,
but everywhere I go
there’s a group of old men
talking loudly
about what they’ll do
when they win the lottery,
or asking if you knew
old Judge Sterling
who gave up meeting with them
to watch his grandson play baseball?
And one of them just started
a sentence with the phrase
“When I join the oligarchy,”
and ended it with “Huzzah,”
which means, of course,
that I’ve stopped working
and started listening
to the fragments of caffeinated wisdom
I can catch with one earbud in.

Day 12: Transformation

In a large mixing bowl,
cream together one cup
of butter and two cups
of sugar until light and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time,
mixing thoroughly.
Add milk,
and vanilla;
slowly mix in your dry ingredients.

Beat together on high
until well-combined,
or until you just can’t wait
any longer
to dip your finger in the bowl
and taste.

Thanks for reading!

Sarah