D.S. Martin

This world is a garden fearfully made ...

In the beginning was the dark like the dark on the road to Cochrane ...

I saw the snow high & lifting each flake on six wings ...

Alone in the desert, Hagar meets the one who sees her.

Before Sampson's birth his father encounters an angel of the Lord.

after Henri Nouwen’s studyof Rembrandt’s paintingof Christ’s parable I look at the handsembracing            clutching               caressing                 the hands I can only seebecause Rembrandt saw them for me  the hands as seenin the light            Nouwen shone on themhis power of suggestion  & insightmaking me wonder how I’d viewthem on my own The younger son in meabsorbs their reassuring firmness the elder                only considers my place & the father I am                though a faintimitation               is dancing

for the Sons of Korah (Psalm 84) Swallows swoop across the courtyard well above the notice of those alonefacing stone robed in black They flit & fly & loop back disappearing into gaps in the wall well above the reach or concern of those pushing paper prayers into every crack Before Mohamed’s people built their domebefore his Jerusalem dream Rome had destroyed the temple not one stone left upon anotherBefore Herod built on the rubble Nebuchadnezzar had knocked the temple…