Thistle seed sock

There will always be a next thing.

An unidentified bird

Found the thistle seed sock

We hung

On the mountain ash.

One cat stares out

The front window.

The other sits on the placemats stacked

At the end of the dining table,

Keeps watch

On the backyard.

The unknown bird

On the thistle seed sock

Is part of the scene

Now.

Now

He is gone.

Now

She is gone.

Cats are good at waiting

For the next thing.

They always seem to know,

There will be

A next thing.

So much promise

I see bee balm next to thistles.  My backyard is not exactly orderly.  Neither, I think, is the Kingdom in which we live.  I am grateful to Robin Currie for her sermon yesterday on the Sower and the Seed.

Rain is promised

For this week

Yet sun still appears

In patches

For short moments

Then disappears

So the promise

May be fulfilled.

I understand

The corn grows higher

This year

In the fields

Of southern Illinois.

My backyard entertains

Bee balm

Next to thistles

So many seeds sown

So much growth

So much rain

So much sun

So much promise.

Thistle

Jesus taught in parables, seemingly simple stories, with odd juxtapositions of images:  a good Samaritan, a woman sweeping her house to find a lost coin and spending more than the coin*s worth on a party, a mustard seed growing into a tree which will provide space for all the birds of the air... a mustard bush big as a house...some bush!  Jesus says to his disciples:    Do you understand?  They answer Yes.   Really?  Really?  Do they really understand?

Last summer a thistle grew

Next to the rhubarb.

In the near-demolished box

Of the vegetable bed,

A thistle took root.

I watered it.

Pretty soon I wondered

How big it would grow.

I remembered eventually

It would have purple flowers,

Then thistle seed for goldfinches.

It crowned at six feet

The thorns

The flowers

The seeds.

The goldfinches came

As I watched,

Swooped delighted in and out.

This Sunday Jesus asks us to consider

The mustard seed

The eventual mustard bush,

The birds that may visit

Even nest there

If we water it.