RUTH C. REHBERG - POEMS

​Ruth C. Rehberg lives with her family in the hills of western Wisconsin, daily reveling in the bounty of beauty around her Garden Valley home. Some of her happiest moments involve walking the roads and woods, scooting on her petunia-pink moped, porch-sitting every minute possible, breathing in the joy of the twilight-golden hour, and reading until her eyes can’t stay open. Gratitude to God for the beauty of the earth is her life’s work.

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​BY THE SECOND

The Past is distant,
feeble and diminishing
by the second,
while the Future
 
is startling close,
hovering around us,
enticing our languishing
Present
 
to pick up
its bumbling feet
and hurry away from
that last, longing look
at the lagging
Past
 
hanging over our shoulder,
pointing casually to
the unfiltered light
blinking before our every
 
Step,
lighting our floundering lives,
sifting the changes around Us,
propelling hope to fill
and float our limp faith.
​

​PURGING BLACK

I don’t want to
leave it;
this purging, black
quiet
(raging about me)
that smells
of dampness,
cool mud,
 
a scent that rises
to the starlight--
floating up,
like the March
robins singing as
they settled in today,
almost unable to
cease their soft
murmurings into
the silky, blue
shadows of dusk.
 
They don’t want to
leave either, this day
of March
madness, gladness,
endearing vastness.
 
We both know we
should cherish it.
(the birds and I
certainly do.)
 
Before bed, I stand
outside and breathe
it down to my toes;
this world at my door,
that comforts me
 
over and over.
​
                                      previously published in Naturewriting.com.

​SAVAGE--TENDER

​This tumbling world
is fairly reeling
in mind-numbing
Beauty.
Beauty—Beauty!
 
(Must I shout it
around the world?)
 
It abounds anywhere
human senses are
capable of turning,
and encountering
phase after phase
of instant, slow-
motion pictures
of our savage-
tender earth;
stinging our dry eyes.
 
We’re almost unable
to mentally absorb it,
almost…
gulping it down
in frantic urgency
to ingest its every little
offering of pure nectar.
 
Spring offers this freely
in a trembling silver
goblet;
taking it, with
grateful breath
we enter
each moment given…
 
moment by moment,
 
Communion with
the Great I Am-- comes close, to mortal man.