Mom (for Bethany)
She was the best mom. In hard times, she’d put a Bible under my pillow so words of comfort mingled with my dreams. (Fear not, for I bring...
top of page
Francine Walls
NOVELIST & POET
Migration
we must find a new home. Five billion years — the earth falls into the sun’s embrace and will not let her go. Our species needs five...
Willows
brown and gaunt, remember they are beautiful, first in the golden slant of the morning light then soon, from within themselves, the...
Haiku, Japanese Garden
The shrine within me. Dew on the blades of grass shines on my dream lake. A feather drifts by, aimless wanderer stop here. Oh, it is a...
Famine
the dead must be washed, every part, to stand before God clean. Hands bound, feet bound, the child lies on the ground, the skull too big...
Loneliness
sautéed in olive oil, a handful of spinach leaves steamed, rice noodles boiled. An Arctic freeze settles on the city too dry for snow,...
Psalm One
(“I found within me an invincible summer.” Albert Camus ) messed up, squandered your money. You have destroyed your health, & you bristle...
New life in dying Aleppo
held by his feet, upside-down, slapped, pinched into that first cry, his first breath angry, the mother unconscious, gutted on the table,...
Shrine for Don
“king of the gods” in high school, caped with scepter in hand, a gentle smile, the basketball star in our tiny world, at 21, a lieutenant...
Giant Pacific Octopus
look carefully around, then worry. It can scuttle over land. Longer than a car, it squeezes through an orange-size hole. The beak? In...
A Church Burns
our aged container of our times together in prayer, sermon, song both in joy and in sorrow. We have gathered here for years, over...
Cathédrale de Notre Dame
in fog, sepulcher white, barely formed, the façade emerges from the mist each statue takes his place above the arches the flying...
Return Flight
you know, just wait until the door is closing to run up and say, “Wait for me I’m boarding, too!” on that plane to somewhere. Sitting in...
L’imagination pouvoir.
In 1968, students barricade Place Maubert tearing up the cobblestones stoning police that march shoulder to shoulder toward them. The...
Souvenir de Paris
we will meet someday again in this smoke-filled room of laughter, and toast, Salute! as the cameras flash their language of truth and...
Francine in Paris – Day 11+
Think chocolate eclairs so filled with soft chocolate and glazed with chocolate that it might as well be a soft chocolate bar. Yum,...
Sr. Antoinette at the Monastery
all the contemplation a meditation within all turned inward, a divina lectio. She said, everything we do must be spiritual, bloom with...
At the Nursing Home
a woman straightens the chair on the patio outside her room. Her Easter lily, parched, sits untended, one bloom left. As I pass she says,...
For Encouragement
who could not be her body magical as fog rising in wisps among the grasses playing dress-up laughing wrapping herself in parachute silk...
Departure
His scent lingers near his bedroom door, I sniff the air – a startled deer – then feel his absence in the molted room. #DeathValley...