Truth be told, we forgot all about the axe.Busy with our landscaping and renovations, weneglected our gardens, all tangles of weedsand fruit trees budding nothing while we poisoned the soil. No surprise to find that it should come to this,the moment of reckoning when our garden would judge.Yet we were golden and glimmering,felt eternal forContinue reading “Advent 8: The axe is lying at the root of the trees”
Category Archives: Poetry
Advent 7: Shedding
When the cry comes out – Prepare the way! –are we found listening, heeding or tending toour own private laneways, our private gains?If I am to hear Him when He should appearand if my feet will be swift and fleet,I must jettison allthat I hold yet holds me, andthrow off the loves that so easilyContinue reading “Advent 7: Shedding”
Advent 6: Benedictus
They shall not live who have not tasted death.They only sing who are struck dumb by God.(Joyce Kilmer, “Poets”) And so Zechariah became one of the poets,hymning the God of Israel with new voice,for those who have most wept will most rejoice,while others full of grace who did not know itcould never pen a hymnContinue reading “Advent 6: Benedictus”
Advent 5: Last Things
Hospital room. While my uncle and I tried to tend to my grandmother’s needs, we heard behind the curtain divider a granddaughter and grandson discuss cremation plans and how the west has avoided death while the east (both fresh from travel) takes the wiser path, rubbing face and hands in body ash and staring death’sContinue reading “Advent 5: Last Things”
Advent 1: Pine
Early evening, cool of day, we walk in the garden to find evergreen branches to weave a wreath of hope. My son is distracted. Not tall enough to reach with me, he stands to watch but soon decides instead to help pile the compost heap with grass. Evergreen and humus: these symbols arrest as IContinue reading “Advent 1: Pine”
Lie down in chaos
He gives His beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:2) The bed decked in a week’s laundry, and a million miniscule things left undone, Sleep still says, “Rest your weary head. The day is long, tomorrow longer, and after that who knows. For now, this minute, lie down. In chaos, be still.” So I am still, and theContinue reading “Lie down in chaos”
Daily Reset
“…dirt [is] matter out of place.” (Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger) When the day’s settling is done, I seek order in domestic chaos, restoring categories I never previously held: that these trains belong together and those trucks do not; while this bus driver does not fit that car, nor does that book belong in theContinue reading “Daily Reset”
A Mindlessness Prayer
These days when all of the socks are odd and all your thoughts are scrambled eggs and, try as you might to talk to God, nothing much makes any sense, for the rubbish awaits in noisome piles, the bills are due and so’s the tax and the laundry measures its depth in miles and theContinue reading “A Mindlessness Prayer”
“Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble?”
When David’s son scannedthe spiritual wreckage that was His houseand delared, “Destroy thisand I’ll raise it in three days,”He meantwhat He said not asmetaphor – which my students all knowis a kind of lying, a hedging of bets –but as Truth, both in symbol and fact.Daily they destroyed this house, and He,the true house, wouldContinue reading ““Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble?””
This Mess
I stubbed my toe on a London bus;it stood in the doorway, just under us. And by the door a bright Tonka trucklay just where an unsuspecting limb got stuck. And in the night a train might strayfar from its tracks into my way; and you, dear you, might show up rightwhen I would ratherContinue reading “This Mess”
The Consolations of Writing 