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Poetry

Poetry

Autumn Leaves

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 tree you wouldn’t think that leaves so far had come from distant oak or birch but for the form they clearly bear. Their gliding draws my admiration: Energized from loosing free, though similar in species’ name, leaves that seemed alike on tree, now individual in flight, differ in distance and descent, distinctive in each solo…
January 4, 2017
Poetry

Resurrection

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 listen. It is there.  A breath – a great inhalation of life, a calm, rhythmic heartbeat. The universe quivers with delight, the heavens rock with stomp and leap and pirouette until the very planets shake. Death slinks back to its catacombs and darkness recedes to its hollow. Only light remains. Nadine Ellsworth-Moran pastors a small…
November 1, 2016
Poetry

utterance

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. Infinite expression, endless creation utterance divine pouring forth in liquid grace perpetually spoken. (Inspired by the writing and philosophy of Shneur Zalman of Liadi) Nadine Ellsworth-Moran pastors a small church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and teaches at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte. pam fray , via Wikimedia Commons
November 1, 2016
Poetry

The Book of Kells

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 Kingdom of Heaven; it’s circuitous, echoing the barrow graves of Newgrange, indecipherable swirls, zigzags, lozenges. Knots without end, alpha and omega, merged. Lines that refuse to conform to a pattern, dance to their own rhythm, lost in a maze. Here, the power’s derived from the wander, and each turn changes the rules. Turn-in-the-Path. Head-Under-Wing. Is…
Barbara Crooker
September 1, 2016
Poetry

Complaints from Medieval Scribes

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 you’d be tempted to write in the margins: “That’s a hard page and a weary work to read it.” “New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.” “The ink is thin.” “I am very cold.” “Saint Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.” “Thank God it will soon be dark.” “Oh, my hand.” “Now that…
Barbara Crooker
September 1, 2016
Poetry

God of Dust

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 fibers and dog hair, Offering them up on tiny thermals, An ordinary sacrifice From time to eternity. One small dust particle dances, Pirouettes, waltzes, sighs, And descends, drifting back Into the blue and white carpet. This – that is what you tell them. This is why I believe. Pierce Taylor Hibbs has written for Westminster…
June 30, 2016
Poetry

Like Water

“Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered …” – 2 Samuel 14:14 In a hospital room of white linen and metal gates he lay as a bowl tilted, emptied of half of himself. (Life absorbs as by a cloth.) We watched his eyes intently then; we had no container to put him in. Weeks later he died in a living room, the vessel emptied, a mirror on the cold wooden floor. It has long since evaporated and…
June 30, 2016
Poetry

Tornado

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, I am a bowl at the edge of the table, waiting to be spilled. The bold silence. Fallen water pooling over asphalt. Fear so absolute it must be forgotten. Heather Cadenhead graduated from Union University and is the mother of two boys, one of whom is on the autism spectrum. She writes at frayedflowers.com. Image…
April 30, 2016
Poetry

Before My Son’s Autism Diagnosis

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 of a sumac— but it was like falling asleep. Something I did without fear of consequences. That first night, you made the house ache with your sadness. Open mouth of a baby bird, longing. But you took nothing, the thing I begged you not to take. Something I didn’t know how to give. Heather Cadenhead…
April 30, 2016