Reality

Illusions fall and shatter
Thorny shards scatter

Look carefully
Step carefully

Soul-silence sweeping
Reality’s unveiling


It is  rambling, infant chatter
undermined self-importance
It is  unending, unseen chores
doorways to humility
It is traveling to teasing chants of “Betrayal!”
bear-hug forgiveness upon return
It is  satisfaction overflowing
ambitions quietly simmering
It is  quietness and trust
strengths drawn from repentance


Crystal slivers bagged and gone
Deeper truth glitters on

Surpassing value of You
Surpassing value of Them

Precious stones strewn
These fundamentally true

©2025 Jacqueline Tisthammer. All rights reserved.

Continue reading “Reality”

Eyes on the Manger

I.
in case you’re wondering why everyone is lonely

I used to wonder at the way
a crowd
could feel lonely
feeling reality
without explanation

some say it’s a matter of
technology, this recent
digital life, before that
the industrial revolution, maybe
Rome’s roads drove us apart

some say it’s a matter of
words, possibility against
a lack of truth, define
for yourself what means anything
or nothing to anyone

some say it’s a matter of
perspective, who really knows
the life you’ve lived inside
looking in through the window
of their own experience

some say it’s a matter of
physics, that matter
never touches, have you ever
really touched another object
much less a person

some say it’s a matter of
sin, of protective clothing
hiding the truth, shameful
parts too much to bear
before God and man

now I wonder how this crowd
of disciplines can explain the reality
of aloneness so impartially
while the poets just bleed
words that never mean the same thing twice


II.
in case you’re wondering what more there is to say Continue reading “Eyes on the Manger”