(after Scott Erickson’s With Us – Face to Face) Did it feel different, I wonder,to hold the child? Could she hearthe hum of creation vibrating

St. Patrick stands at the shore:slithered impressions in the sea,smile smeared on his lips,staff slurred into a half circle. Angels soaring in the Irish skylisten

I. Late August humdrum heat hanging from brittle bushes by the nearly dried-up crick We smell them first — floral warmth and woody delicacy– astonished

for Wiebe Boer In green spaces, the young run drills—call their Cruyff turnsSwange; say the footballs they orbit are honeycomb worlds. The earth is sweeter,

Psalm 40.5 The sun feels warm upon my face – I mean,upon my eyelids, from behind which Iam looking through a wintry, cloudless sky,expecting not

I am remembering the day my olderbrother became a force to reckon with. Tall, clumsy, goofy, and a little slowin more than just one way,

Genesis 1-11 The breath of God sighs over the wild wastes;The wind of God blows over the dark deep;Creation! Spring fertile plains out of chasterocks;

Often we need what we have sent away– dismissed as blasphemous on some happier day– then suddenly we’re desperate to knowa snippet of the future

Yellow butterflies return to oaks in the grove. They accompany a landscape gone to seed, ragged and wet in the sunlight. Their coming signalsa betweenness,