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