Jen with Three Ns

My J's crook wound like a lollipop

Like a fine-toothed comb was my E

True, each of my Ns had one hump only

Yet there was not one of these, but three

(I have never known when to stop,

can’t you see?)

Wordless Song, draft no. 1

Little girl by the shore

waiting for God to send

A message in a bottle

Cross the ocean blue

I am empty

I am empty

I am right where I belong

There is someone who can carry

The weight of unwrit songs

I am small but I am listening

all day long

 

Spread open the Bible

Right there on my bed

Taught that His breath fills

The book from end to end

The crucible for silver

The furnace for gold

I am empty

I am empty

I am right where I belong

There is someone who can teach me 

a wordless song,

Where there is Spirit

there is an indwelling

when he comes we will

start the truest

storytelling.

Summer Loss, draft no. 1

Love, you held on through

the last peony’s bloom, but 

missed the fireflies

Safe

He covers me with his pinions; 

He cradles me in his love; 

My Lord, he has dominion,

In this world and above. 

Poem for the girl that writes, draft no. 2

 

I’ve been looking at a picture from a card

a vintage card with a girl holding a fountain pen and a bow in her hair.

I want to tell her that it is okay if

she never writes anything at all.

I want to tell her it is okay if

she never stops writing.

I want to tell her when she is older, she will hear of someone who did so much

that no writing could do him justice.

I want to tell her that she does not need

to find paper.

She could lose her pen for days and he would not feel at all upset with her.

She does not need to fear anything at all.

All she needs is a word.

And I want to tell her that she will know

the Word

because the Word spoke her to life.

Treasure, draft no. 2

The things Mary treasured in her heart

were not things--

To know what to treasure

is the treasure.

Breakfast by the shore, draft no. 2

by Jen Hunt

God does not seem to be that concerned about calendars.
If you have your weekend planned on Friday
like you’d always hoped you could
planned it maybe even on Thursday night for once
actually planned
what you are going to do that weekend with your
free time
whether you call it Sabbath, rest, “your” time
and if, by the time you get to the weekend
you stumble over a
Friday
and just when you thought
there is no way you could recover from a day that sad

almost as sad as Good Friday
which I always in my mind
confuse with Black Friday and am so sad because
Freud was right
I often think goods are good and God is black
And so my mind twists these and I forget
that no Friday no matter how bad
can be blacker than the Friday that was Good
And the Good Friday was so good
in the kind of way that only God knows how to be good
that it un-bads every other kind of day there is
if you let it

and then, when you reach your weekend
you find [laugh, gasp] God was already there
waiting for you to pull up a chair
and He is so glad that you showed up that he invites you to breakfast

and he gives you fish that he caught
fish that he made
fish that he let swim wherever they wanted to go because he,
being God and man and good and wise
is able to trust the fish
he knows what is in a fish and in a man, the bad--and the good
the fish that swims in the ocean that he made
trusts the fish will know when it hears its master’s voice and will gladly
jump into his net because he knows or she knows

--I have never been able to tell the difference between male and female fish have you?
But God does--

the fish, he or she, knows
that being in God’s net
cooked on a fire that God has made
is the reason he, the fish, was made… she was made
and when they, the fish, are then eaten
they know that was their purpose
so they would never dream swim away

And I know that when I run to God’s breakfast call
I will not be turned away.
His menu does not run out.
It is inconceivable that the Lord who made the fish and who made your stomach
and who made the whale
and the whale’s stomach
and Jonah and gastric juices
and spit
could forget about hunger, your hunger
could forget food and that you need it.
Because he had a stomach too
and food and drink that we know nothing about
and a tongue and a mouth
that would never spit you out.
No, he is never thirsty.
Nor, if we’ll let him
are we.