This morning I released, without a doubt, the same bright trout I gathered in my net …

The room ticks, a cry from the bassinet, time’s mouth speaks again …

My sons are on a mission, wielding sticks and nixing iridescent bubbles …

I used to want you to understand all of it: the dripping roof, stalagmites rising up like dandelions …

In the future we will live in pods of reclaimed wood and very white bed-linens …

On good weeks it happens twice. Once on Sunday morning, sunlit sanctuary …

ICE arrested someone on my block. Walking my dog, I saw the witness first …

to the absence of your own voice filling your inner silence …

It says right there in Amos chapter eight: “The time is surely coming,” syas the Lord …

My mind stops, one foot in the air …

I pass the big nursery on the way to see my father for the first time in a year …

Gashes in the green. Stumps and roots serve in …

Each day you wak to the same gray sky, snow covering the gass like scarves the women wear …

After Fred broke up with me,I returned to graduate schooland immersed myself in six classes,an overload, trying to heal. One sunny autumn day,I sat alone

the large jar lays beside the well of the city’s forefather …

There are at least two Machuses in heaven. Malchus according to LUke has at least two ears but no name …

First leaves of trout lily among the roots of a bare beech tree …

Against the turnings of solstice hope sprouts eternal …

Wrapped and laid beginning and end bloth and cloth birth and death …

the phone rings–my grandmother’s voice winds through static, light as the creek curling around her back porch …

It’s about us which is an empathy pronoun, replacing her and him and you and it and, praise the Lord, other.

Seventy-seven pounds of wool on that merino sheep who got lost
in the Outback.

Let the sparrow take a chair at the Juneteenth table with Elijah …

You said, Let there be light, and there was light. And you saw that the light was good …

On the night he was supposed to be betrayed, Jesus strapped on a Glock under his cloak, just in case the breastplate of righteousness didn’t

Unnoticed except by their Maker, my wife and me–a dozen sparrows blissful at their ablutions …

We drove nails into His wrists, air reeking of animal remains and criminal bodies piled next to the horse trough …

meaning click tongue when crossing the street for joy of having legs …

Ice crusted sheets over November puddles bespeak more of the future than this cold day …

Among the earliest of sins …

                  (for Siani Woodard)  I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made– Psalm 139:14 Half-court. Dad said our perch from steep bleachersallowed us

It’s not always easyto carry good wishes and admirationin a see-through bag ready to toss up like confettihoping enough will stickto needed parts of willing

I asked for two fried egg sandwichesand a blueberry milkshake. I got soup.And it was raining so instead of tryingagain to read “Middlemarch,” I lay

You can hear a conversation about this poem on the Reformed Journal Podcast. Photo by Ahmad Ajmi on Unsplash

First I place them in a line atop a narrowpath along the side of the house. That path grows muddy in winter,and the stones will

after William Carlos Williamsso much dependsupon a babyGod swaddled incloths lying in a woodenmanger so much dependsupon a manGod swaddled inpain hanging on a woodencross

The marketplace vendors admit they can’t explain God.They shrug and pocket pomegranates. Argue the flax is souring too quickly. They weave a melancholy spiritinto baskets

After 1 Samuel 24 His beard tightly curled, black locks in ringlets,Saul’s regal forehead slumbers on bedrockat the mouth of a shepherd’s desert cavelike an

The name given to a mountainous region in the Book of Genesis, where the binding of Isaac byAbraham is said to have taken place For

A wilderness road so barren and yet so full, I was far from home,too deep in the vast whiteout expanse of Yellowstone,snow-mystified Douglas-firs or legions

I know, I know, the universe is so big that you can’t be significant.So, let’s go small. Let two grains of sand rest in your

How vexing to be like a tree plantedto produce sweet apples yet on whosegrafted branches crab apples grow I know it’s unlikely any other orchardhas

It’s summer and the monarchs are getting ready for their migration this fall. Here are two previously published poems about Monarch Butterflies. Butterfly by Harold

We are taking a break at Reformed Journal this week, so here are two previously published poems that capture the essence of summer. Blackberry Blood

You sayI should revere the fatherwho made my squint-eyed sister my enemy,birthing sons: chiseled-flint spearsto pierce my envious heart. I sayHe’s a trickster to rivalmy

She standson her hill’s heightsure to cause sensationa cinematic windsweeps her hair backlike a declaration echoingshore to shorethough you’ve chosenher & want to makeher glistenAt

Snow sieves over the lawnlike an angel’s torn eiderdownminus the comfort. I’m shaking packets of Fleischmann’sover warm water. “Set the yeastaside,” the family recipe says.

This mountain home weathers backwardsBrown winters, white springWater fills the airWraps the greenObscures, hides, conceals, dimsHand extended disappears I once met a friend at the

There were no ropesjust a net of handsto catch me in the stonehouse that held the worldwhere he sat teachingheaven to receive me. I fell

So many of those I’ve lovedhave paid their last debtto nature My prayers changed nothing though I’d setmy heart on changing God Eyes heavenward I

At first, a block away, there were cornfields,the fields of Rengel’s Farm, the last ones leftin town two suburbs straight north of Chicago,fields sold then

And Adam knew his wife, who through the knowingbore Cain. You are handsy in the Uber,having known me all afternoon thoughwhat I will bear as

From my mother blue eyeswatching from the fringeslike a rabbit in long grass From my father thin browsraised & veering with dreams& schemes From my

Once I believed in You,still do,though belief is often evasive, often abstract,like air, which itself defies graspyet needy lungs clutch at it with the certaintythat

quick breath, heart beat, clock strike: each metronometick-tocks past paths that arch like R’s bowl, backby another route, by the crook’s call home:a lost and

The cancer shot through Earl like a rainbowand left a crook in his arm, just right to lift upthe grandchild he’d never held before. With

—after Ellen Bass I could build him a barn, a big one,as wide as the sky, red, to show my loveand to confess I share

If when the end has ended & allthat’s been running down begins to rewinduntil each beginning has once more begunimaginethe mountains grown taller more jaggedthe

I was 7 and riding the school bus hometo the trailer we lived in back then.My chubby, right cheek was pressed against the cool glass window when a

From the falling formof an intricate vase,water was freed,each flowing cluster and dropa complexity of light,color and motionspilling excitedly through the airamidst one vivid yellow

I can only wonderat this blurredwhir of evidence, cloudedin the blue fanof a thousandwings. I wantto feeltheir million beatsper second on my beardand lashes,reelfrom each

When God wanted to speak,God’s mountain goat jawbone locked shut,so God leapt silentlyrock to rock, appearing at timesto sidle up a sheer vertical cliff. A

Batter my boat Wide-spread Watermake your breakers shake my hull& threaten to capsize me Pushmy bow & blow me back attack me broadside with yourwhipping

1. Everything that rises must converge;or rocket in reverse. I ruminate, lifting fallen coleslaw.By this very retrieval I learn an equal, alternative law:All that descends

If tonight were the world’s last nightmight I spend it striking the anvilof rhetoric to prod wanderers tobecome insiders?Might I pester God to open hisdoors

Obscurely yet surely backyard birdssimple & further from corruption withthe wonder of wings call us to praise A sparrow caught & fluttering in themechanism of

This morning, two scrub jays in a scrub oaklook out over the canyon. The oak is dead,enlivened only by gray-green lichencoating the remnants of its

Like all of us who carry hidden pain,he soberly performed his task that day.When his turn came to sacrifice and prayhe did not celebrate, did

An anxious mind is paralyzed by choice.The angel doesn’t offer choice, but birth —springing the snare of virtue versus vice. Her eyes fixed on her

How can we stomp it out?all the rude crudesmashed glass & heartachethe grabbing stabbingfussing & fumingSledgehammers just breakfingers Unset boneswon’t heal straight Is it worthall

did it hurtwhen the tongues offire landed on theirheadsdid itburnsinge ignite something in theirtonguesso they talked all crazy and the sound of the windroaring like

After Matthew 26:52 Blood streaks splatter across moonbeamslike a pearl-string snatched from a virgin’s neck:the ear of a guard, hacked off, falling down to dustto

Pride be not deathfor as I’vestretched to reach out from thesebrambles to cut away the vinesabout my ankles to step out on thispromontory you swell

After Marc Chagall’s “Sarah and Abimelech” What kind of fool flings his wife to another manas if tossing a meaty shank to a drooling wolf,thinking

I play the part of an earthboundstone   you   the part of the moon in this silent   ceaseless   standoffAs a rock   an oversized pebble I’m kicked along some

The fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure. — Isaiah 33:6 Beyond eager to bear witness to the miracle of compounding, I have deposited,Lord, my

Harlem Cultural Festival, 1969 As though Eve herself,in all her intricate glory,electrified once again the rib, as though her twin lungs, rumblingwith divine breath,let loose,

“Go, some summer evening, to that hallowed place, where your thoughts so readily run back over the past, and so willingly entertain the hopes of

Take the globe by her imaginedcorners & stretch her flatlike evening against the skyBlow your trumpets angelsto stir our souls& stir bodies that have died

Once, before children, my wifeand I took a nest of fledglingsto a woman who rehabbed wildlife.I remember the “No” that creasedher face when asked if

Re-enter the world, a worldwhere, no matter how it first happened,the spark of your conception, too, was Spirit, as was the amniotic fluid—a dream brooding

The doctor’s office grants no placebeyond the floor’s gray linesto form and color. Here is spaceclean scrubbed and blank, defined by tile. Phone chorus, keyboard

No longer bent like weightedbranches or shrivelled like applesin the bottom of a bushel basketNo longer circling & recirclingin unsolvable mental labyrinths my parentshave left

In memoriam, Anya Silver We chose not to seehow close it hovered.She had been sick so longwe had grown accustomedto her bright scarvesand turbans as

Jumping from a great heightPlanting a damaged flower, hoping that it will grow,Getting down on one knee to ask for marriageThese things take courage From

I doubt my final creditsare quite ready to roll  though   so far   I’ve outlived John Donne’s span  & that of so many of the poetsI admire   I

–after Ross Gay First, it’s the backyardswing and the gentlesway and me with my sappyYA novel about teenagecancer patients andyou never knewwho would liveand who

Having never spared a thought that it may hurt this muchwere I to strain my voice against a stricken & starless sky, I strain my

The perilous journey of monarchscomes every four generations. Driven by some response to the slantof the sun–some peril in the air– they strive against the

I am a little world made cunninglywhose every element   spiralsdownmirroring the worldoutside where glistening surfaces fadelike a tarnishedcrownThe planet prophesiedwhen I wasn’t listeningthroughsidewalk cracksthrough the

“They also serve who only stand and wait.” But here I sit, half blind, life two-thirds gone,musing and sipping coffee on the deckof Latte Balcony

For David Beckwith, 1950-2022 The week you died, the Russian tanks rolled into Ukrainethrough gauzy snow like this. Your brothers joked that Putinwaited to invade

Have you ever desireda carwash for the soulrushedright up to thoseretractable doors to driveright in let the gush & spraywash away mud-splatters& grease? You knew

(Ribes sanguineum) Back in 1825, David Douglaspacked your kin on a ship to London,where sales of their seeds alonerepaid the cost of his expedition. That

From the very top of Grey Butte,the peaks and canyons of Yosemiteflash around us as they do. But above, in an ocean of deep-blue sky,four-five-six

Take heart—they say the darkest hour gives birth to dawn,the pain and pitch and fog, saliva-thick, but then, the brand-new start.Take heart—joy comes with the

The mystics say to dig, hammer the cloud, dayand night. That the act of gazing at the long obsidian robe of God undresses unknowing. I

In the heat of summer as afternoonwears on as octogenarians care fortheir flower gardens & sprinklers jet across expanses of lawn the waterlevel in the

You ask me what I thought then. I thought what I think still—tokeep custody of my eyes and lips. If my mistress wraps fig cakes

Plenty of dented signs on the highway. Igloo photographs in the drawers on the left. I don’t know where the antidote is kept. Nobody came

The fog again –it hangs late this year,whitening the airthe way snow whitens the ground.Separating the city,it makes neighbours invisible,softening and dulling all of life.

The first flurries are falling,falling slowly. In the dark of morning,I reached into my shadow closetand plucked my wool sweater,the old one, with snowflakes. It

Sitting at the end of a lakeside dock,with solid cedar boards below my chairbut ever-flowing water underneath,I saw a cumulus cloud toweringlike a holy city

Those who look to you are radiant Sometimes I make the mistake of beingtoo corporeal-minded forgetting we’re predominantly made of lightmissing how like the moon’s

“On December 10, 1968, Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and perhaps the most popular AmericanCatholic writer in history, stepped out of a bathroom shower during

Too lotsthese lights. Batscan’t do their gnat trickbit. Too coursethese foods, too bruisedthe fruit, blacked the viewToo fierce these fuedsToo true: all sinned,too sinned, all,

That time keeps onslippingslippingslippinginto the futureisn’t true,strictly speaking. It slips past, if anything,like a train.It also slipsinto the past as ifthe past were a bogcapable

And what did they write with their iron styli,what complaints carve into his scholar skinby order of the Emperor; by assignmentand timely, stab with their

When, at 1:00 am, our neighbor risesfor his nightly ritual, plinks a bit, then— perhaps inspired—passionately pounds out“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” my husband

“…the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” — Isaiah 11:7“Is this what it’s like…a little blood here, a chomp there … must everything whole

a rattler come sliding through the grassslow as digestion. I stamped the dirt—but you know effort in a dream is like kicking cotton— it kept

This world is a garden fearfully madean unruly orchard once well formedthough now decayed I am a gardenerwho mourns well-meaning overwhelmed misguided having let children

The soul of my cat is in the riseand fall of her breathing,undulations like wind overa prairie, softest plumes tremblingon the spine of a knife.

A friend loves at all times … a sibling is born for adversity — Proverbs 17:17 friendship is a reciprocal relationshipcharacterized by intimacymade faithful because

This place is flushed with a friendly lighton Sunday evenings when the days grow short,but not on this Lord’s Day morning. On thisday of the

I said I wouldn’t do it,so how does it happenon a Sunday we tookcommunion that I findmyself staring at aglowing, naked image?And I do not

(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,

It was the 3rd of July100 plus degreesher cancer had returned.the picnic was tomorrowher kitchen was asunderso she came to mineto make brownies and potato

Creator Guide, I have most everythingI want, my needsare more than simplymet, you’ve more than simply earned my trust. You invite my tired bonesto lie

we drive to see a house ablaze in lightwindows trimmed in green and more greenthe doors flash red and white, our faces glow incandescentbig bulbs

If, at the harvest, I bring you a jug of cold water,and you drink till you are drunk, I am your servant. If, in the

I became a mother,my life upendedthe way persistent rain todayhas filled the watering can,overturning it. Doesn’t love seek lovealways? My own mother held meso close

Mid-day, a slightest shivering mistbut still the sun staring overyour shoulder, those wispsstealing across peripheral fieldslike several clever students late for class.The professor with the

I don’t know, Lord, but sometimes I feel like all my accomplishments could fit inside a Pez dispenser, with room left over for candy. Let

In the beginningwas the darklike the darkon the roadto Cochranewhen at highwayspeedto flick headlights offwas to flirt with oblivion the darklike the long middle-of-the-nighthall on

Overnight,new toadstoolsshoulder throughsodden grassthe way sorrowsemerge, oneafter another. Traveler,in a season doublyscented by windfallapples and creepingrot, please sidestepthe lone wet leaf,beaded with dewlike tiny mirrors.Those

          “I contain multitudes”  —Walt Whitman fugitive and scaled captorlinked by appointmentmore than accident more than appetite here I ammammal mother with childsome kind of

The kitchen radio’s whineintones catastrophe—wildfire, species loss—all breakfast long. While Ioffer a troubled gracefor oatmeal, toast, and juice,it dribbles misery down. The local news, too,

The backyard maplesspeak in fire-tongues,filling the windowswith gold light as though they were banksof candles, burningbefore great shrines,these days of the dead, in vigil and

10 January 2021—The Baptism of the Lord Falling since morninga whiteness common elsewherebut rare enough in these climescovers sights all too common here and now

The world stands out on either side/No wider than the heart is wide.—“Renascense” by Edna St. Vincent Millay How wide the world?“No wider than the

a woman sky eternal silencesprings the sun newbornalabaster is the memorywhere singular is the right purpose of the heartiridescent bodydoes not cling for all is

Cathedral elms once graced our street Before they cut them down.As rot seeped into greenery,On came the chain-saw sound. Cathedral elms were God’s sure signOur

Though you had always lived in light, you lookeddeep in the dark, and chose the way of pain. Deep in the dark, we chose the

Sometimes, when I fearthe small light I bringisn’t big enough or brightenough, I think of that nighton the beach years agowhen every step I tookin

If you were hereI would put my handon your heartand hold it thereuntil our breathsbecame a single tide,hold it there untilI could feel the momentwhen

With thanks to Wendell Berry What if diplomas were earned for the seconddefinition of the verb“graduate”: “to change graduallyby degrees”? What if teachers graded using,say,

May sunshine, and the old professorsits on his deck eating a cold beef sandwich while just above the grassthe sparrows trampolinewind currents as if they’reguided

Aunt Louise listed her garden chores on a chartin the laundry room next to the garagewhere she tended her collection of bonsai.In the careful work

The breeze is brisk like a crisp cup of water as I drink in sunlight on the Sabbath,a Latin cigar gifting its peppery smoke before

It’s surprising how a chaplain’s visitwill resemble a Shakespearean script,|artifice shaping the entire eventwhen one steps on a hospital unit. Like a thespian’s stage, this

Quite near but not quite tothe white tile balcony,at dusk there soared or flitan acrobatic troupeof house bats out for joyof moths and flies and

Got nothing much to say.The golden trumpet treesall chucked their blooms today.The streets were bright with strands. A corgi on a lineignored his owner’s will,tugged

Many of your sistersand brothers stay inside the podhuddled together, the brownand brittle October hull eitherprotection or prison.But you have broken out, pushedaway this dead

What if the Spirit of God just appeared to meright now, and it was in a flock of wild turkeys?I awoke and, lying in my

How sad the moon must becenturies of poets explainto hang so dimly in the skyvague beacon in the raincircle behind passing cloudsgazing down from her

Eucalyptus bendingsouthward, angledby sundowner winds, you pointover the top of lastDecember’s spot fire, saying,I just knewthis would happen. Photo by Ghiffari Haris on Unsplash

Ah, la lune est brisée, said the childto the half moon. She stared, pointing her fingerat the night sky. Her sudden true and wildthought broke

More lonely than I really want to beI find your name written on the back ofmy hand where I used to write the names ofboys

“God is love, but get it in writing.”– Gypsy Rose Lee Between the two long rows of large chairs, you might see Godin the therapy

            after Genesis 3:7 who bounced me on his knee and hummedthe William Tell Overture to make me a horse,who amazed me with the garage

Behold, your King is coming to you;He is just and having salvation, lowlyand riding on a donkey, a colt, the foalof a donkey—Zechariah 9:9 Little

In the desert,the tiny, golden moleswims across sand dunes,paddling hard with broad claws.He zips across the barren terrain,like a tumbleweed,diving deep now and thento cool

The hidden life in melistens for the voices of the trees.They are singing, somewhere deep beneaththe silver skin of old beech treessounding roots that holdthe

This minor key carries usAcross the floor, around the roomNot minding a bit if we can’t fly.God’s happy with us for beingOld. Photo by Peter

A green tablecloth covers the three pushed together tables.Glass pitchers of water, lemonade, and chocolate milksit on the adult’s end.Ham buns, butter, fried beans,strawberries from

A bird’s soft, breast-feather driftswith the falling snowand settles on the fresh layer of white.The fine feather-wisps curve upwardlike cupped hands in meditationopen to the

Black flies swarm in the horrid heat,circle the Nuer mother and her two daughterslying in the sub-Saharan dust of Watt.Knobby knees stick out of skeletal

how forgiveness feels:like the game starts over0-0and this time I won’t keep score how forgiveness looks:a stoplight turns from red to greenI walk into the

write a poem, He saysI can feel His hand on mine but I have no poem to writeexcept He opens my mind I wish to

A skein and a gaggle each requiresmore than one bird. When it joinsa group, what will the nomenclaturefor my soul become, when no longerearthbound but

thinks he’s the archangel Gabriel.Nighttime is when such thingscan happen. We permit twilightto linger inside when he talks.That’s not what I heard, I say.It’s what

Five specks in V-formation move in smoothapproach. The sun transmits a flushed alarm,thin flames of tangerine among the crests.The small fleet coasts our way and

After the illness struck,those who lived near enoughgathered to bury the child. The church doors sighed open;the neighbors slippedinto the marbled blue night, all but

A downed oak, toppled by time, pithless logleveled, imploding, rotting edificeunder blown snow; above, warped-and-wovenscene of leafless torsos, sky’s grays threadedthrough like tattered banners attesting

In dreams an island looms in silhouetteand speaks through the outline of a mouthand murmurs it’s an idea not an island,not an island. An idea

That moment when, in the midst of wreckageand tears, you see a scarlet cardinalacross the way, and last evening,he and his mate, more russet than

The Holy Spirit comes in while you are quiet. There is nothingvoiced yet many questions while our tongues are still. In the yearsahead of us,

On Sundays when football isn’t onour family naps through high noon westernsafter church. In my dreams, gun fights echo the sermon. This morning my daughter’s

Texas Dept of Criminal Justice ID: 02290142Crime: Aggravated Assault of a Child.Sentence: 7000 years. Age 41 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy

To lie in the dark and ask for day. To name the unborndaughter Dawn, the shortest street Aurora. O Oriens:Light that breaks, that cracks the

Then I made love to the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. — Isaiah 8:3 His warm, coal-scarred lips grazemy breasts

Look to him and be radiant. —Psalm 34:5a Be red desert blush. Be peacock plume glanced by high-noon sun. Be moon-ring chalking winter night. Be

We praise you God, for your name is near —Psalm 75:2 In the vein-code of a leaf, hear it in the bleating of the neighbor’s

It brings me joy to report that to Scarecrows we all look the same, Evil people go to the bathroom The same way good people

In an emergency room, I satBeside a man with a pencil in his eye,He told me a joke that I don’t remember.We’re all junkyards.This is

Let every best thingfind you driving, like a phone call: able to take it. May myriadsof second chances grab you, like a package,retracted to check

Let us believe in a strong god,who makes the oceansroar and the wind crack about our ears…For we are envious of this, and tobelieve in

Three teen deer have begun of lateto make daily dusk-time stops out back,their flat flanks and thick, angled necksdepicting stumps and trunks that thenmove and

What’s woven thenin broken timesis this:a blessing from the linen stripsof lamentationpeeled Lazarus-likeoff our soulsby sisters unravellingwith gentle fingersthe binding of our separate selvesto set us loose

I want to leap like a raging fire,like the lame man who was healed,to thrill and bound with gazelles and goatson mountains and in the

We say “He” without a nameto speak of you,hear our own soundsechoed back from far awayin the monitor’s shush and fuzz. At night, I hear

3:00 am Christmas,and your newly divorcedneighbor’s trying to screwtogether the last wall of a doll housefor the four-year-old she’s finallycoaxed into sleep,when your stereo blaresElvis

after the painting “Jonah” by James Patrick Reid Ready to swallow the fallen, the sea swells. “The waters want me,” Jonah cries, running, running, always running away.

“Do not step out of this area.” —Words written on the wing the plane From this window seat sweet puffs of white disguise irregular quadrilaterals, webs of

after Lawrence Raab are not like the wee hours,where anything might happen or already has— or the blousy hours of early morning,the sheets taut under

The parlor lies beneath its settled dust.The grand oak table in the dining room,Long stripped of plate, cuillere, and candelabra, Reflects the twilight like a

The sky’s so thick with graynot even the faintest shape of cloud shows through.Somewhere behind, the planes drag their wings alonga current of air. The

In the northwoods, the serene pulse of the lake greetsbuds and pollen falling under pines while bees hum  praise from sunrise until dusk in this

I halfway thought the wind would still be in them,but the little coppery chimes were full insteadof spider sacs and dauber mud, gray-redfrom the airs

She was right about this place, the unforgiving winter months sullen, sunless, bitter, but then spring a dream God has and lets us slumber in

Thistles mock all, growing . . .in a heap of broken glass with last year’s soot.—Genevieve Taggard, “American Farm, 1934” In the moments after she

No one to place the potted liliesin a semicircle, fragranttrumpets raisedaround the pulpit. The piano’s teeth delicatelystill; guitars lean their long necksinto resting stands.

“Here’s a truth, friends,”He said before leaving:“Anyone with faithwill do greater thingsthan these when I goto the Father.” Hyperbole. It had to be.Greater things thanwater

A sudden itch for woodcraft, Ihead for the garage, take twobead-board doors from a dustystack of kitchen-cupboard pieces rescued from a garage sale,the old spruce

I drive into the plains when the moon is full. I find a dirt road.There is a pasture gate with a turn-off where I stop.

And he took the fire in his hands and the knife–Genesis 22:6 The beasts walk single file, saying hallelujah, eating bones. The woodsmen with their

Ages ago I left a small town lifesearching for something I lost wanderingin confining predictability.Big city answers filled my small town soul. Glutted with certainties

The world spins and staggersWe grab the side hold the mastHoping this storm is not all we will ever beTime’s torrents toss us wavewardAs skies

You, pod of the poorthe famished, the saintly, the destitute—of those besieged and those diseasedof St. John in his itchy wrap of hide andfur, wild-haired

Did you give a nameto your longing?Did you set out knowing what you’d buywith your bindle full of gold?Was it the blinking women, the sweeter

I clamber up the brick wall.Fingers sink into the cracks of caulkuntil my hands reach leaded frames of glass.Stretching myself across the puzzle piecesof bright

And the angel said unto thee, Go thouinto your garden and plant Creeping Jenny, alyssum, Sweet Woodruff to crawl acrossthe earth, and herbs to bring

How had he known to callscarlet tanagers scarlet or indigo buntingsindigo? Yet the wordswere so fitting he saw when he sketchedthe bow he’d witnessed after

The only waywewill bethe same at the lastwill be to go homeand sleep. We must notmake the maquette.

Holy Spirit guide herthrough her wilderness.She is a travelermomentarily lost on thisjourney. Fill her soul withkindness. Let her knowlove’s security. Give herpeaceful dreams and quietrest.

The explosive flutter of quail taking flight;the plastic twist of hummingbird gossip;the frantic grate of a hummingbird warningto a trespassing blue jay. The sharp pain

“When you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer … the sacred space where the old world is able to fall

I.the perch closes its mouth on the wormmy hand jerks the polelungs swell quickly on a gaspwater wrinkles as fins protest heavefish surrendersguilt surfaces II.air

He who plants the ear, shall he not hear? Psalm 94:6 Who set the heart like a bulbin the chest, shall He not bless the

This collage of tears and laughter,Wanderings toward promise and much laterWhat seems the murder of the Promise.Of Isaac freed and Jephthah’s daughter burnt,Of Hannah’s prayers

Here and now and not yet—like a child in the everpresent,cradling in the palm a rockand finding it a world.

Genesis 16 I stumble      in desperate      headlong flightfrom the sharp bite      of a woman     emptyof what her god has promised      enviousof what seems to be

Judges 13:18 I was out in the field     where the wheatgrows golden     in the heat of the afternoon sunwhen the grain parted     & you came

by Debra L. Freeberg What happens at the end of life to the stored treasures of knowledge and memory? To the books of language fruit

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 the Sons of Korah (Psalm 84) Swallows swoop across the courtyard well above the notice of those alonefacing stone robed in black They flit

Bright May—but Sober, somber, alone. Scored By razored circumstance. Emptied. So retreating To the soothing shade of the sweet gum tree, A few pieces of

Life is such weight! That is what you suddenly thought Lying awake in the enormous silence that isThe focus of the insomniac’s pained consciousness.So in

Night shadows are the feast of awakenings. The outskirts of compassion, absent of spiritual thresholds. They are the counterparts without conversation; the willing partner in

Disturbed waters are the evidence of youths seeking a smooth belonging; searching to square off the circle. They are dreamers between rocks, pushing from a

When the kitchen table becomes a confessional and the combat with demons in the heart hears conversation turn toward tired despair, How many more years,

After Camille Pissarro’s Haymaking at Éragny Pissarro clumped, sculpted, plowed his oil paints to produce this hayfield: fertile pigments mixed, molded, together like squelching mud

I’m holding a thought in my mouth I’ve got it polished and smooth, and oh it’s hard II the middle like a rock I spotted

Hosea 2:7 “What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?” – Jacque Lacan “ut operaretur eum”

Hosea 2:15 In January your keys keep the time, plink like antlers discarded in the foyer. House sealed tight as a covenant. I hold our

On July 6, 2016, Officer Jeronimo Yanez killed motorist Philando Castile while Castile was belted in the seat of his car, accompanied by his girlfriend

There was a caution in the air. A thin front of yellow yielded to heavy black layers of a disruptive sky crawling menacingly above. Thunder

You have my heart which is similar to the moon’s grip on this night Dark branches reach high to embrace the sky waters bulge in

Soren Kierkegaard once said Martin Luther might as well have married a “wooden plank” Katherine, Kette, hidden in herring barrels, driven into town to hunt

Charlotte Elliot No one wants to come just as they are to the Lord. Only children, who go just as they are to anything –

my daughter asks. And I tell her to point anywhere she wants. She points at a dead worm on the sidewalk. “Yes,” I say. “God’s

One sustained Alleluia kisses the psalmodic couch, the sanctified family photos, and the unstained glass window where I see a monk- neighbor in medieval bathrobe

If I sit on the porch and look out on the morning, It is the dust I first see on the window panes, Smudged here

Miles and a moment’s ease flake away – the toddler shook us awake to ask When did Jesus paint our skin? Like memories of San

The whale I lost in a book of water I look for with a pair of binoculars. I trawl for whale; I leave it verses.

As you read these words, I lie lynx-like. I lie lynx-like in prairie sage, in a phase of abstinence. The yelp I trust is periodic;

To you, O Lord, I offer my heart, promptly and sincerely. – John Calvin From the time I was eight I have pondered your portrait,

Here in a parking lot in February Where snow, piled through the winter, melting in thaw, Had sent a freshly pulsing tributary Across the asphalt

It seems the leaves know that they’re done with green of photosynthesis: loosing their stems from tendril grasp, they drop, but glide so far from

They lean over balconies, strain to hear through thick silence, dangerously close to the edge of sky and star, where time smudges into forever, they

There is no beginning, only continuation of the utterance. Breath into breath, spilling out beyond breath into being, form unfolding, the utterance behind all existence.

Here, there’s no circle, only the spiral, endlessly turning back on itself. No straight lines, only curves, coiling, looping. There’s no direct path to the

a found poem Imagine sitting for hours at a slant desk, copying on rough parchment with a sharpened quill, day after lonely day. Of course

Early afternoon in late December: Clouds covering the face of the sun Parted and let light flood the living room, A current picking up carpet

“Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered …” – 2 Samuel 14:14 In a hospital room of white linen and metal gates

Fir needles like rattling bones. The air a myth that has been told and retold, fading from emerald to onyx. My skeleton soft like honey,

Nine months of darkness, then the sound of scissors and we separate. I thought I’d love you because you were part of me, feathered limb

Like a mat they beat her out, dragged her sorry ass to the court and called for Jesus. Jesus, Jesus. He washed his hands, slipped

Walking gets me nowhere I walk to buy groceries I walk to the coffee shop I walk to be inspired I walk and remember that

For sad people like us it helps to have pictures— or rather, new pictures to displace familiar ones. Old pictures don’t change. I once had

Poor lovers, we know our parts none too well, nor our cues. We kiss in the dark, backstage, under the glow of EXIT, near stacked

Let us romanticize a monk, hunched-over, candle-lit, a sackcloth habit snuggled close to repel the winds besieging his abbey, medieval, dark, his stylus tracing pregnant

After Job 13:15 “Though He slay me, still will I trust Him,” seems a rhetorical boast, easily made, for who can comprehend this claim’s worth

I bask beneath this eye, sun roving our marriage bed, sheets bunched together like gathered wheat. Your side empty and cool now, already you work

Ruth and Boaz Dine Grapes, sweet and cool, ornament the table. Blue-veined cheeses on wooden slats, rosemary and garlic. Bread with gold-toasted crust, a soft-melt

How has so much of your on-fire certainty cooled despite your tossing on another slab of cedar and more kindling? Surely this is a failure

Most often, your trouble is beginning – so many activities more alluring. Try as you might, you’ve never regretted having prayed (once you’ve finally started).

My brother has come to live with us and how could we know how deliberate his hands would be: at the sink, thawing beans stringy

Here they brought thousands of the hurricane’s dead. Even the dogs knew to stay away, low rumble in their throats, September begun with a lurch

in our Florida retirement village we were on the patio ice cubes clinking in our gin and tonics conversations rising sinking from a tree next

Smidt’s burning bush has tongues of flame that dance and leap in autumn’s winds. The oaks that shed their dull brown leaves seem to look

Hacking through a thicket of noise to reach some clearing within myself I am lost in a jangled jungle of thoughts Tossed about in the

It is almost 8 now the crowds have gone and the festival tents are packed away inside their Rubbermaid totes for another year of hibernation

He loosens his work-tie’s noose-knot, ascending a staircase climbing above our grey earth, fallen leaves clotting gutters in the car-park where a divorced neighbor, half-lifed,

What do we mean when we say children are God’s artistry as preachers are wont to do during baptisms, deleting from their homilies words like