Mom

She knew how to bend the soil 

Into color

How to scare off Starlings and squirrels from her bird feeders so they wouldn't eat all of the food that she's left for finches, chickadees, Michigans robins

how to press her flowers into books and make roses flat like paper and somehow still hold the color red

This way you could

Keep them forever 

She knew how to hold her hands just right when folding bread and the perfect amount of flour to turn it over and over like waves 

And sometimes I wondered what all of this was doing for the kingdom of a God 

All this beauty was it enough

But every time I look at her I feel like I'm looking at Jesus

Have you see her wrinkly hands?

The way her skin has changed with years of pressing on us, lifting us, scaring away the squirrels 

She has built mountains

And I can see it now 

I want my hands to look like hers