(after Luke 15:8)
- A long breath in, and lines run lightly out --
- the threads a spider throws, a writing spider
- ranging the corner crown of an inner room
- where a woman has lost a silver coin, and lights
- a lamp, and takes her broom, and sweeps both common
- and shadow, each curve an unspoken word, the craft
- of search -- and though she upbraids herself for paying
- so little mind the coin fell away like the breath
- she takes for granted (breath's art so self-possessed
- she doesn't cause it here or there to spill
- in and out of the circle), of her work she's certain:
- if she bends the broom's bristles, scrawling her intent,
- the web she wills will catch a silver edge:
- she'll find the coin, loose, ineluctable, brilliant.
1. What might be a "lost coin" in me - something of value in myself that I've lost or mislaid along the way?
2. How and where in my life is God moving to help me find it?
Angier Brock Caudle is a F@W board member who lives in Richmond VA and teaches poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University.