WE  STARTED
 
 
We started in the rumble seat of your friend's car.
On a hot August night
When you were twenty and I was nineteen.
We had not tested life or traveled the hard road.
I didn't know about you and you didn't know about me
When fate stepped in and decided our destiny.
 
The sign of our time were young people of our age.
Starting out to restore what a war had taken
and destroyed.
 
We were young with passion in our eyes
And small change in our pockets.
We hadn't heard of charge cards
Or jet planes or mortgages or split-level
homes.
 
We were in love, life was all new
And we were just beginning.
 
 
 
Edna Katharine Meinert–Starbuck
July 12, 1990



 
SLOW LAZY LOVE
 
 
I like that long slow lazy love
We once had.
It lay there just under the surface.
It was in your eyes when you came in the door,
Or across a room filled with people.
On the drive home from a movie
When you would touch my face
With your fingertips.
That long slow lazy love
It grows because we have been together.

  
Here I go again lord, "Tea Party Religion,"
I wonder just how the church has survived
                                           as long — as it has.
 
Real life is no party.
Real life is reaching out for something inside us.
Real life is hurting, hating, loving, wanting
                                            waiting, forgiving, accepting.
Not little cakes or cookies we can hold in our
                                            finger tips.
 
                                            Tea Party Religion
I don't feel like my life is real, Lord
I feel like it's a cover up.
I am the way I am because people expect me
                                            to be this way.
I would like to say, “who needs it,”
                                            break away, run.
 
                                            Tea Party Religion
Some days are worse than others,
But I put on my face and go.
I can't cover my eyes though.
If anyone ever really looked at me, they could see.
I wonder why I let them use me like this.
Is it because I see this same — image
Not just in myself but in others.
 
Tea Party Religion — with the little finger
                                           sticking out.
Must be careful now; don't stick out anything more,
Just couldn't get involved; who needs to get involved,
There's even a time limit on it;  
9 to 12 – 2 to 4 – 7 to 9.
When all the while — it's already too late.
My chance has passed by — I'm caught
I don't want to be caught, I fight it
Inside that is.                 No one knows.
I want to be free.
Help me to be free Lord, inside.
                                           Tea Party Religion 

RESURRECTION
  
On a dark spring afternoon
In the rising wind and rain of a precedent storm
Men walking by, stopped, and read the sign,
Nodded their heads in approval and went on.
One jokingly saying, “A job well done, —that
one will bother us no more.”
Not knowing God's love cannot be put
to death on a cross.
This is why we have Good Friday
then Easter.


 
DARKNESS
 
It’s so dark in here Lord.
I can't see what's going on,
Can you?
Can't you do something about it?
Can't you turn on the light?
But that's crazy.
I know you've tried.
I know the darkness bothers you too.
I know the closed doors bother you.
I know,
Because you've been standing outside so long
Just outside.
Waiting.
Wanting just one small opening.
It doesn't take much of  Your light
And we can begin to see.
Why are the minds of men so dark?
And — hard to get into?


​
CASSIE & ME
 
I didn't see it coming
The leaving I mean
I was caught up in the todays
I so enjoyed the times with her
The two of us
We baked the cookies,
Walked to the store,
A visit with a neighbor.
Watched the mourning dove
build its nest and hatch
its young
She would get so excited
When she saw the little heads
Come up out of the nest
Each day brought a new flower
a new joy
No, I didn't see it coming
I was too busy
Watching Cassie grow