But we venture on. Newness at least is inthe air, on Capitol Hill, in the fruit jumping out of trees. We cannot slow thisif we wanted to. Shopping aisles charge ontowards Christmas, while my heart craves Advent.I could use the dark, the waiting, to bendsoul’s joints back into shape, could use the longsilence to learn againContinue reading “Excerpt from “Plague Year””
Category Archives: Poetry
My Monastery
Order unravels quicklyfrom sleepy first breath tooutbreak of chaos.I cannot controlthe unfolding of the day, but Godof the singularity andmultiplicity teachessingle-heartedness ifI take this momentto listen.
Broken, new
Everything breaks,is broken, orsticks underfoot like porridge.Voice grows tired, andheart turns wildat the endless, savageprice of love.Crushed underfoot,I learn Eden and Golgothawhile I wipe the floor again.Body breaks, is broken,tomorrow is new.
The Gospel Reading
The day had gone on long enough.First the Pharisees and their questions,then the intruding children,then the camel and the needle’s eye,so that, when they cried out,”Who then can be saved?” it wasas much from the weariness of the day’s debates as the thought that riches could keep an earnest man from heaven.And so, right whenallContinue reading “The Gospel Reading”
Wednesday
Learning the names of days, my sonasks each morning for the signs that distinguishone from the next: is thisthe day the rubbish truck comes?Does Dad go to work?Is it music class today?And this day, one withoutany special markers, leaves mebereft of news to give him, onlythe name – Wednesday – and the thoughtthat days likeContinue reading “Wednesday”
Day Zero
On this dayI still wrestled my childreninto their clothes,still raced out the door too late for comfort,still pricked my finger with a rose thorn,still feared that all my labour’s in vain,and found the evening slumpa little close to despairyeteverything changed, while nothing changedand mustard seeds of life were at workwhether we noticedor not.
Unbound
My twins’ favourite gameis to grab a Bible each and rundelighted round the room shouting,”Bible! Bible!” as thoughtreasure has been found.Their Bibles are ragged and worn from rough handling;binding broken, the Word opens up,unbound, into the mess of life.
Compline: After Christian Wiman
Man is what he is and he is everything that he is in the decision of faith Karl Barth And faith, or belief, is moredirection than assentto a thought or a fact; it ismovement towards the thing from which others turn,and from which you may have turned,will have turned,for hole-hearted love is never whole-hearted,and yetyouContinue reading “Compline: After Christian Wiman”
Still Life: After Caravaggio
Vespers: After Louise Glück
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 this, this alone they must have.And I believe likethe fig tree believes in the soil,sometimes wilted, sometimes refusing fruit,always held, always known to the roots.And at the vesper light, Ibelieve,Continue reading “Vespers: After Louise Glück”
The Consolations of Writing 