Gifts of the Spirit

The Gifts of the Spirit


Patricia Reinhardt, Writer, September 28, 2009


What are the Gifts of the Spirit?
Creativity, the ability to write, to paint, to weave, to make

Charts, to organize

The Self and the Other?

The very ability to smile?

To be a Janus
By displaying both
The welcoming and devouring

Face

The thing about looking out the window and thanking God
Seeing the wind comb the graygreen hair of the palms
Seeing the palms comb the silver hair of the wind
The wind and the palms grooming each other like animals


Hearing the least audible
The tiniest snap along the bough
The footfall of a bird
Are these the Gifts of the Spirit?
Saying shut up to a loudly barking dog in a distant yard
And being understood
Loving the sight of the outline of the beach umbrellas swaying in the gray dawn light
Are these the gifts of the sprit that I so thoughtlessly accept?

My One Child,
Her voice electronically conveyed
Her smile imagined
The icewhite of her teeth like the brilliance
Of the Holy Ghost on Facebook

Are these the gifts oft the spirit?
(I kept her milk teeth in a drawer for thirty years---were these the Gifts of the Spirit?)

And then they mysteriously
Vanished perhaps

Resorbed by the Paraclete herself

The dove that hovers over my breadcrumbs.

This poem was written inspired by trees that have since been cut down by my neighbor. they were in his yard.