Francine Walls

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...

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...

brown and gaunt, remember they are beautiful, first in the golden slant of the morning light then soon, from within themselves, the...

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...

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...

sautéed in olive oil, a handful of spinach leaves steamed, rice noodles boiled. An Arctic freeze settles on the city too dry for snow,...

(“I found within me an invincible summer.” Albert Camus ) messed up, squandered your money. You have destroyed your health, & you bristle...

held by his feet, upside-down, slapped, pinched into that first cry, his first breath angry, the mother unconscious, gutted on the table,...

“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...

look carefully around, then worry. It can scuttle over land. Longer than a car, it squeezes  through an orange-size hole.  The beak?  In...

our aged container of our times together in prayer, sermon, song both in joy and in sorrow. We have gathered here for years, over...

in fog, sepulcher white, barely formed, the façade emerges from the mist each statue takes his place above the arches the flying...

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...

In 1968, students barricade Place Maubert tearing up the cobblestones stoning police that march shoulder to shoulder toward them. The...

we will meet someday again in this smoke-filled room of laughter, and toast, Salute! as the cameras flash their language of truth and...

Think chocolate eclairs so filled with soft chocolate and glazed with chocolate that it might as well be a soft chocolate bar.  Yum,...

all the contemplation a meditation within all turned inward, a divina lectio. She said, everything we do must be spiritual, bloom with...

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,...

who could not be her body magical as fog rising in wisps among the grasses playing dress-up laughing wrapping herself in parachute silk...

His scent lingers near his bedroom door, I sniff the air – a startled deer – then feel his absence in the molted room. #DeathValley...