Lesley S. King

In this house everything is new. Nowhere do I see remnants of the past.   The bookshelf that once held legal dramas and murder mysteries, now holds only love poems.   And that stove, that brewed witches’ stews of boiled stink-eyes and simmering regrets, now, with its instant gas heat, cooks meals of choice manna. […]

These flash floods tear through and erode one’s homeland. They wash away the topsoil and leave in their wake gullies, ditches and silt.   The first impulse— divert the flow off the land, renunciate it, so it won’t cause so much trouble!   But then the Divine presents a perma-love way: use the flow to […]

How would I ever get home if not for this road with all its potholes?   Sometimes I scream in the dark when my headlights aren’t bright enough to light the way.   Or when fog and icy rain lead me to follow random taillights into ditches and even over cliffs.   Or when road blocks […]

I thumb through the photo album. There I am in at age six wearing a Sunday plaid suit. Defiant, I dart my tongue at the camera.   In high school, a pudgy face and body from boarding school starch, I slouch in the Y of a tree.   In college, tan, golden hair, I fondle […]

Give up hope, for better health for peace with your neighbor for a lasting relationship.   Trade in those plastic poker chips for actual gold.   Mind says, “No!”   “If I lose hope I have nothing left in my pockets.   “Without hope, the Grand Canyon yawns between my ears.”   Exactly!   Nothing […]

  It drifts in from the west a cloud, dark and churning. Sitting on a ridge top, we watch its drunken steps as it careens toward us.   Do we hunker down? Do we run for cover?   We stay still trusting the promise hidden within its vapor.   From my lips escapes a prayer: Please […]

In this desert where even the most sensuous kiss dries to a crisp where the greatest artwork, blows away in a dust devil, where even a tear drop sears to nothing in the relentless whirling of time, I call out to You.   With a heart desiccated as that giant saguaro corpse laid out black […]

We think it is so solid, this gingerbread house with its cookie siding, chocolate wafer roof and frosting accents, when really it is only butter, sugar and spice.   The walls we try to lean on crumble away with slight pressure or melt to mush in a glass of milk.   Fortunately the true mansion […]

That hurt that stops you like a bear trap, metal teeth cutting to the bone is really but a raindrop on a hot rock. It sizzles and then evaporates.   But the mind tells the story of pain and blood, and a cold winter storm until the hurt becomes a bomb dropped on the city […]

The earthly details dissolve into the radiance of Love.