Ding the lights of the level crossing red; The common man is held at standstill now. He measures plight in traffic lights and how Great the cost to take the Bridge instead. The day is long but time spent here is dead, Growing only lines on furrowed brow. I will not kneel to son ofContinue reading “Other Places #1: Beginnings of a new project”
Category Archives: Poetry
Haven’t You Heard?
Some will sit as though nothing’s new, staring at the constant sky. I confess that I’ve done so too and held the lie. Some will wait for what does not come and think that waiting is divine. Some will fall and some will run until the time. Yet in the terminal of souls a voiceContinue reading “Haven’t You Heard?”
Quo Vadis?
We could not see the top of this wall – but now that we’ve scaled it, what lies before? A dream of tomorrow? A promise of now? The moment is furrowed on destiny’s brow. No sureness of footing, yet held for the fall; the wall is beneath us – what now?
Open
And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. (Luke 1:64) No good unless used for you: only death, only a swallowing tomb. No sweet grapes from a rotten vine; no figs budding from a cursed tree. When speaking, we curse; when silent, bones waste… Until the words, HeContinue reading “Open”
Counting Words and Days: For Ash Wednesday
Because we’ve loaded even our song with so much music that it’s slowly sinking and we’ve decorated our art so much that its features have been eaten away by gold and it’s time to say our few words because tomorrow our soul sets sail. (Giorgos Seferis, “An Old Man on the River Bank”) I shouldContinue reading “Counting Words and Days: For Ash Wednesday”
Week of the Figs and Peaches
First the long wait: trees stubborn in their stasis, only buds, only promises unyielding to the squeeze. Then – overnight almost! an abundance attracting the birds, the sun. Come to their trees and find them burst open, drinking in the light, or the semi-spoiled meal of toddlers pecking on passing by. Neglect for a minuteContinue reading “Week of the Figs and Peaches”
Grace, charm, a clenched jaw
If what Christians believe is true, then Gide knows now what all of us will know before long. What is it that he knows? What is it that he sees? (Francois Mauriac, “The Death of Andre Gide”) Was it better by far to be wily, in the end? Maintaining to the last where Montaigne hadContinue reading “Grace, charm, a clenched jaw”
Searching for Sully Prudhomme
I had assumed, perhaps unwisely, that because he won the highest prize he must be somewhere I could find him (online, perhaps, or in the library). Yet, though some sites had heard of him and books in French lurked here and there, the only place I could repair for works in English was a bookContinue reading “Searching for Sully Prudhomme”
Teacher
Jesus never said a thing without the ring of action round his pricking words. When he declared that cheeks should turn each time their other halves were spurned, remember that his own cheek fared worse than those he preached to. See, when they were striking, he was biting each resisting word inside his mouth. No,Continue reading “Teacher”
Tom and Bertie
Once the marriage was destroyed* did the one take comfort in the other’s halitosis? And did the other, foul in breath, seek scum to prove that folly persists in churches and in the minds of worshippers? If words are crude and language imprecise, then actions like his speak loudest: a moral compass cast aside withContinue reading “Tom and Bertie”
The Consolations of Writing 