Blue Lent

Blue Lent 1
Originally uploaded by paynehollow

This Lenten season, we are celebrating in colors at Jeff Street. Each week, we'll worship in living color and this week's was blue, which reminded me of the poem by our own Kate, about the blue heron and the poverty all about us...

Between These Worlds
Kate Sanders

The fog has lifted off the lake.
Only a thin mist still swirls
along the surface of the water.
The sun lights the red and yellow leaves.

In Clarksdale,
shots ring out over the early morning traffic.

At the edge of the lake,
a blue heron crouches, lifts his wings,
then beating, beating, steadily moves
his great blue body across the water
to a sunny rock.

In Clarksdale,
shots ring out over the early morning traffic
and a two year old is struck by a bullet
while sitting in his stroller.

I sit here by a crackling fire
Somehow caught between these worlds.

The great blue heron shakes the damp mist
off his feathers and stoops low, lower,
and leaps into the air.

He flies northeast
over trees and fields and interstates
until high above the city
he circles, searching.
He settles slowly, like a single feather,
into the heart of Clarksdale
onto the edge of a housing project rooftop.
He stands there, wings outstretched,
above a mother who sits crying
holding her wounded boy.