Caulked

Blessings as you begin 2026! Like many of you, the advent season of waiting, then rejoicing, wrapped me in a renewed sense of peace and comfort. But, like my Narnian friends in C.S. Lewis’s classic, Christmas has also reminded me that I’m not really “safe.”

(This month I share one of my pieces found in the latest anthology of poems by my favorite poets. Volume III of Habitations is another rich collection of verse by members of the online writing community, The Habit. Each poem is this work is a beautiful “offering of ink-letting” to God and His world.

Purchase here: Habitations Volume III

Caulked 

I am not safe—

for holiness 
crawls in the crevices

of my most hidden
nooks

between the cushions
butt cheeks, fingernails 
and floorboards

into friend-fractures
and clover-clefts 

ruptured junctures
of joy

into the cracked contrition
of my slit self.

I am not safe—

for if such holiness 
ferreted the filth
of one feeding trough

a crib shunned

rent from the clean
the comfortable
the sound—

then my heart-fissure
and fear-felled faith

will quake
wholly caulked
with a seal
seeping

of fullness.