Communion

“Communion Service,
next Sunday morning at 10:00,”
church bulletin said.
I imagined sitting there,
wafer and tiny goblet of juice in hand
trying hard not to think
of what I’ll make for lunch.
It wasn’t even a prayer, just a thought
I wish it had more meaning for me again.

Early Communion Sunday morning
the book opened to the spot
kept by the crocheted cross
“The Bread that I present to the world
so that it can eat and live
is myself,
this flesh-and-blood self.”

(Ew gross!
It offended the Jews then,
‘How can this man
serve up his flesh for a meal?’

People still say,’Your religion
is too bloody.’)

“But Jesus didn’t give an inch.
‘Only insofar as you eat and drink
the flesh and blood of the Son of Man
do you have life within you.
By eating my flesh
and drinking my blood,
you enter into me
and I into you.
… bring a hearty appetite.
… make a meal of me.”*

Oh God of heaven, Jesus, Lord
On personal invitation
I’ll chew the bread, imbibe the wine
Your presence my distraction.

I cannot with my literal mind
Pretend to understand
What happens when I eat and drink
Inscrutable, heavenly plan,

It’s mystery
And intimacy,
Communion
God with man.

© 2004 by Violet Nesdoly

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This poem was first published on my blog promptings in 2004 (where still almost every weekend, seekers find it it when they Google “communion thoughts”). It’s also it in my second book Family Reunion.

*Peterson, Eugene H. The Message, the New Testament In Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs CO., Navpress, 1993, John 6 – pp. 234,235.

In stitches

I am in the choice of pattern
and in my fantasy
of how the suit sketched in tweed
will be incarnated in velvet

I am in tissue pieces
laid precisely, pinned snugly
facing the right way
on the wrong side.

I am in the concentration of my tongue
and in the rhythm of my heart
as scissor blades
crunch, crunch, crunch.

I am in the synapses that pass
from instruction sheet to brain
to fingers, in spaces
filled with the conductive medium of faith.

I am on the rolling highway of stitches, even and perfect
seams, smooth and straight
then in the pin-prick that sees
something is wrong; I must rip and return.

I am in the mirror
reflecting shoulders that bag
a waist too tight
and a skirt that sags.

Then at last, after being in gathers, easements
overcast hems and under the hot iron
I am, snug and snazzy
in this garment I have made.

© 2006 by Violet Nesdoly

I wrote this poem in response to a prompt at Poets Online (Archive: February 2006 – “In The Moment” prompt). The webmaster of Poets Online publishes some of the submitted poems for each prompt, and it made its publishing debut there.

Transformation

“You hem me in – behind and before; You have laid your hand upon me.” Psalm 139:5 (NIV)

Shut away inside this silken crypt
I long for undulation on the pavements
wriggling up trunks and along branches
munching leaf to leaf.

Those carefree sunny days
have given way to terror
as motionless, deaf and blind
I feel Your acid-enzyme melt my heart
liquefy all that is earth-bound.

So I abandon any hope of preservation
as, redefined and reinvented
in this dark and secret vault
I’m given a new heart, antenna, legs – and wings?

Entombed–for what?
It’s surely death.
Could it also be
a new and unimagined life?

© 2005 by Violet Nesdoly

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“Transformation” won honorable mention in the 2005 Utmost Christian Writers Poetry Contest.