Poets’ Corner
In the Sandbox
For L & S Sand sifting through and over your fingers: that is power enough, for you know that to build is to be divine in this small world. By your spoon and single truck, you are deified, as deliberate as—or more than—those kings of old Mesopotamia steering their kingdoms of clay. ~ ~ ~…
Canzoniere 349
At every hour I seem to hear the messenger she sends to me, and so I change incessantly, diminished by each passing year as my reflection turns unclear; I spurn the way I used to be. I long to know when I’ll be free although that moment should be near. How joyous it will be…
West Nickle Mines School Shooting
Man enters classroom, opens fire; Five Amish girls will die today— Doves take flight from schoolhouse spire. Two daughters cast upon the pyre Their lives in hope it might allay The man with gun who opens fire. While outside, as police conspire— the press reports, the parents pray; Doves will cry, hearts expire. Word travels…
The Collar
pulls my poverty in among the poor, tugs my stiff-necked affluence toward Jesus understudies, breathing icons I’m priest-inclined to pass on the street.
After Belatedly Watching the Ken Burns Vietnam War Documentary
Behold, I make all things new. —Revelation 21:5 Already past the middle of July, The summer I left for college, said goodbye— For weeks, not months or years, eternity— To the girl I loved, still love, I’ll always love; All summer, Vietnam, the nightly news, Men…
Two Poems from the French of Paul Claudel
The Resurrection This silence of all the centuries before me: there was no way, it had to be given up. No way to say anymore of interrogated Earth: she shut herself up. The stars set themselves to tell what they’ve seen, …
Death is swallowed up in victory
Anagram of 1 Corinthians 15:54, NKJV run! the Physician has made death burn, wove saints a garment tightly—tools to withstand rot, unspools limp sin-torn city, all without prior wrath, but establishes rich hope upon it
December, Henry County
The dead grass stands where it withered. The corn stubble, a muted choir its praises more remembered than sung in this landscape devoid even of the solace of snow. The sun muted behind the gauzy sky makes no shadows. No one here believes in spring. Summer is a myth, a story of the man and…
Sunscreen
That day we went to Southport without a thought of Time, or Love, or God, or even sunscreen — when it was late July, and we were nineteen, when beer and cigarettes were all we brought, when swimming naked meant the glimpses caught were also offered, when no desire was unclean, when death was in…
Relics
The saint in her stasis reclined there, Preparing to rise, her handlers made clear, On what bailiffs call the Last Great Day When they swear in the witnesses at court. Wouldn’t it be fine to see it happen In the rainy doldrums of a Thursday, The skies finally parting, not for the sun, But the…