Johnna Benson Cornett: "Origami Birds"

Wading through Segullah, trying to sneak up on an Easteresque poem so I could pay my svithe appropriately today, I found "Origami Birds" by Johnna Benson Cornett, a poem that begins with "birds of intersecting angles" (line 1) then transforms, as the lines fold into each other, into a meditation on the intersection of lives, specifically the overlap of mother and child.

I like the poem's simplicity, how it juxtaposes "the precision of paper" (3) as folded by an adult with "the smudgy folds of a child" (6), how it captures my own longing to be what I need to be for my kids, to "mirror make" (7) something of our lives together that can raise us on Christ's healing wings into Eternal Lives. And I especially like the closing image of this Bird, this Phoenix (as I see Him), rising from "my heart" (11) toward the throne of God "with a prayer in its beak" (12).

Thank God for that Bird's mediatory flight.

And Happy Easter. I'm off to make some origami birds with my kids.