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