Call for Poetry Submissions
As the summer comes to a close, it’s time for Daniel Rattelle and me to turn our attention to the serious matter of poetry. Last year, we had a grand old time editing our first volume for Little Gidding Press, The Slumbering Host. I pitched the idea to Dan the first time we met,…
Examen
In filtered sunlight footstools even shine.They show in autumn tones their tenebrae,A brown that sparkles—isn’t that so fine!Along with chipper calls, cicadas pray. The peaceful sun’s retirement from this day,This night, leaves nothing lost; days do not die.Instead, night gathers in and up our playIn packets portaged forward, tight and dry. The day’s clear glare…
Cædmon
(657 – 684) Ashamed to be without a song to shareWith men more talented apparently,The herdsman left the monks in revelryAnd went to sleep with creatures in his care. That very night he was commanded inA dream to sing of how the world began;At first he balked and said, “I doubt I can,”But inspiration led…
Midrash
When the ink printed on paperfeels rigid, sterile,we can close our eyes,lean in, and empty our breath.That’s when the letters separate, rise,dance in the air like leavesflittering as they fall. We collect what we can,rub them across our skin,swallow them whole and feelthem warm inside of us.The ones we miss formkite strings across the skyas…
The Weakness of Men
The story is that men are getting softer.They break down sobbing, hide a face beneathA towel, after they’ve been benched, as ifA private room of terry cloth could shutOut our contempt. They say that some men areAfraid to lift a phone, to call the drug storeAnd ask the hours of the pharmacy.They’ll sit there, sunk…
The bite.
The bite. That one bite. That defiant crunch —“Oh God!” She begg’d as knowledge ravish’d her.That old cliché that ignorance is blissWas in this act conceiv’d, but none can know —Not really — know how knowledge felt at firstTo pure primeval innocence of mind. She knew the tree bore knowledge by its name.She knew its…
Fourth of July
The streetlights flicker, set to hummingLike mosquitoes in the amber nightOf tree frogs and fireworks, unforked lightning,Spine-tickling rivulets of sweat. This is the stuff, I think, this the life I recall from my youth by the ocean, Days of marsh grass and the sun’s gold-leaf,Heinekens, Merits, the soulful motion Of lights across the bay. A couple thereSits…
Godric of Finchale as a Thorn Tree
Homage to Frederick Buechner The thorn was bronze and wonderful to see,Though no one’s safe around such scimitars That escalade against the very sky. Yet scimitar by scimitar it rose,And being made so barbed and barbarous, Perhaps it meant no harm but harmed by chance. Woodcutters could have axed and hacked the treeTo toss a greenwood crackle…
Afternoon
The sparrow that can fly against such windDeserves a spot in memory’s museum. Likewise the sunbeams on the bedroom blind,Slanted just so, a light preserved from autumn,Intruding its chill upon mid-June.As school lets out for good, I hear the cheeringOver rooftops of the kids at noonSet loose through double doors and spinningLike struck marbles, and…
Pentecost
God’s hov’ring Breath above the deepDrew from the new-created crustThe brush, the fruit which men would reap,And heads of wheat whose upward thrustsSprout grain for baking into loaves. Then like a mighty, rushing gustThe Spirit filled Christ’s Brother-BandWhose language left the men of dustTo marvel as God’s second HandStretched o’er the field that Peter sowed,…