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