This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Rose Anna Higashi.

The Ascension of the Lord

In May’s middle, luscious clouds come with dawn,
And sprinkles dampen the full-blown roses
Glistening at the doorstep.
Hope is everywhere as the sweet gray gathers
And the scent of holy water
Rolls over from the coast.

Hope mobilizes God’s people—
Hope in the dawn-song of finches,
In the violets thrusting their lavender faces
To the shifting sky
As we celebrate our Savior’s homegoing
And open our hands held high in the healing rain,
Our hearts filled from the wellspring of His Love.


Rose Anna Higashi’s poetry journal, Blue Wings, was published by Paulist Press, and her novel, The Learning Wars, is available from iUniverse. Her poems have appeared recently in Americamedia.org., The Catholic Poetry Room, Agape Review, Poets Online, The Avocet, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Scarlet Dragonfly Journal. Many of her lyric poems and haiku appear on her website, myteaplanner.com. Rose Anna is a retired professor of Literature who had a second career as a lay ecclesial minister in the Catholic Diocese of San Jose. She now lives in rural Hawaii with Wayne, her husband of sixty years.

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