When she was just a pup

Since her lovely face adorns this blog, I will include this poem from her very early puppy days. Killarney is now 2 and a half years old! Hard to believe.

Getting up in the night with puppy

Out in the rich blue of a starred night

I am watching icy feather-drift

down from his basket hung from Orion’s arm

a new puppy thrusts her nose

into powdery cold and comes up white

ears flopping, tail high, amber

against the crystal flakes we push through,

I in my sheepskin boots and she in her God-given

teddy bear plush

she snaps at snowflakes

down the next path filling up with snow

this is not a wood

still there is no other sound but the sighing

of the wind and the crackling of the wires

and far away, a dog barks to inquire

about the new arrival

I have no other

words for the faint falling curtain, icycles

like a Christmas garland of blown glass

no words for the silent vigil

I keep for the world–

the moon gazing fondly on us

It’s all right now
You can turn over and fall back to sleep

Father and I and this new puppy will keep

watch with the moonlight

in a backyard at three a.m.

Hush now

It’s just another city garden

filling up with snow

it’s just another promise I have to keep

not long before I sleep

House of God

One evening a friend of ours shared how God touched him in his lowest moment. As he walked down a city street, a small boy ran up and held out a flower. When my friend knelt to receive it, he was suddenly aware, like Jacob, that this was none other than “the house of God.” When I read Genesis 28, I am in awe of how God comes to us in unexpected places.

House of God

After the dream of the angels climbing the ladder to Heaven …Jacob was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of Heaven.” Genesis 28:17

The house of God
sometimes rises
from under our feet
enclosing us
in holy spaces
while we walk
a dawn-hushed beach
a village foot-path,
negotiate a snarl of traffic,
tramp homeward at dusk

Though it may burst in
with a shout, a roar
more often, it drops a pebble
into the well
while we, like Jacob awakening,
hush to feel its ripples wash the night

Copyright ©2005 by Judith Frost