My poet’s pen is a bit dried up of late. Not sure why. This poem form last year gets at some of the feelings of trying to make something happen that isn’t happening. I like the suggested submission to the concrete shards on the urban beach most. Something about smoothed over brokenness seems to beContinueContinue reading “Forcing It – a Friday sonnet”
Category Archives: poetry
Holy Geese
A poem about the Holy Spirit as the wild goose of Celtic Christian Iconography
Turning to Before and Behind — A Friday Sonnet
There was power in the walking and the making. Maintaining the physical space added a concreteness to my prayer. This is the main feature of walking a labyrinth in the first place, but it was even batter to make the way for future me and future loved ones to walk it, even the grandchildren of the labyrinth (my children) who mostly miss what I am doing as I journey to the center. One day, I pray they know the power that can be met person to person using this walking tool along with many others. Until that day, and for that future, and toward it in me and them, I’ll walk it every time I’m here.
Tumbled Open Good Friday Prayer
It’s Good Friday. I wrote us a poem that’s also a prayer. Hope on a death day. Jesus was the first one, but now they are all that for those who are in Christ. One of Circle of Hope’s blogs celebrates death days of those who have gone before — Celebrating Our Transhistorical Body . Today,ContinueContinue reading “Tumbled Open Good Friday Prayer”
Swallows Show — A Saturday Sonnet
Since the Covid 19 quarantine began, I have spent a lot of time sitting at a little desk I put in my bedroom (now office). My lovely little room has windows which face te lake on which I live. Newton Lake in spring and summer is home to a colony of tree swallows which dart across the water in the morning and evening in dizzying patterns. They make me feel big inside. They “make the water wide” I say in the poem.
Alas – A Sonnet for the party we will have
Rainy Day Longing I sat down this morning and looked out my bedroom window to the rainy water of Newton Creek and wished with all the melancholy of the gray day to be rid of this virus. “Alas” was the word for the feeling. Almost all sigh with a hint of french pity in it’sContinueContinue reading “Alas – A Sonnet for the party we will have”
Poolside – a love poem to many moments and a prayer
Poolside Heat baking upThrough terry cloth towel –Drying me up as the sun dried me down.And red-yellow dancersAmorphously movedBetween the backs of my eyelids and eyes.Seal slick hair,Tufting up in the airAs I turned back from fish into boy.Sometimes so hotIf I lay there too longI’d roll right back into the pool.It must be justContinueContinue reading “Poolside – a love poem to many moments and a prayer”
First Flight – another Friday Sonnet
Here’s a sonnet trying to capture a moment and make it more than it was, and exactly what it was. It was with a bird, of course. Happy Friday!
Master, where are you staying?
If Unseen Man turning around on the street, What did you forget? Unaware I’m watching, You skip The show that lets us know You aren’t a lunatic. No finger to your temple, No shoulders shrugged, Or arms outstretched, No palm to the forehead, Or even an expression. You just turn around To get your keys,ContinueContinue reading “Master, where are you staying?”
Sleepwalkers – a Friday Sonnet
Sleepwalkers for George MacDonaldWhen darkness burns a hole in all our views,And knowledge-ash-curled edges seed dismay,Can we know anything we know we knew?Will you show us all and call this today?We see few truths with heartless, burned out eyes;Twice-seared with every disappointment first,And second by the fire’s condemning lies.These leave us twice blind with nothingContinueContinue reading “Sleepwalkers – a Friday Sonnet”
Is Love Enough? A Poetic Meditation
Will the simplicity of loving my neighbor communicate everything I want to tell the world about Jesus? Will it communicate the same to me? It seems too small, and my particular love seems especially too small. Can love be enough? Jesus says so, but wondering never hurt. This is a bit of a ditty withContinueContinue reading “Is Love Enough? A Poetic Meditation”
A Poem for New Creation
A fourth dimension that’s more than math,And more than hypothetically true,New Creation makes a walkable pathThrough actual me and actual you,Here and now revealed by an ancient holy one whoLet old things go and look! — everything has become new. A feeling on the edge of what is known,And always approximated by our speech;There’s aContinueContinue reading “A Poem for New Creation”
New Birds — a poem
New Birds The low, pink-gold lightof an evening in winterMade new birds in the treeBehind my house. Standing underneath and looking up,I was astonished byTheir tropical candescence,Bright bursts of feathers on their breastsWhich glowed like embersAs they flitted westward,Following the pull of the Brightnesswhich had lain itself bareupon their transformed bodies. A sharing of brilliance,UnassumingContinueContinue reading “New Birds — a poem”
Four Advent Sonnets
Four Advent Sonnets for my 2019 Christmas Story Ever since I was seven years old I have written a Christmas story with my family. This is a cherished tradition. I invite you into my living room to share in what I wrote this year. Advent has traditional characters that help us walk through the activeContinueContinue reading “Four Advent Sonnets”
A New Sonnet: Facing the Eternal Word
Channeling Something True I’m slowly memorizing 1 John 3. Some scholars doubt that the same person who wrote the Gospel of John also wrote the letter of 1 John. They cite Greek grammar differences for this assertion. Pseudopigraphy is the fancy word for false attribution in ancient texts. It was not uncommon in ancient communities.ContinueContinue reading “A New Sonnet: Facing the Eternal Word”
So I Started Writing Sonnets
Six sonnets I wrote. Sonnets help me meditate and hopefully they help you see something I see, or better see something you’ve seen.
Eulogy for the Pinelands
Oliver Speaks for the trees Today I wept tears as I saw the writing on the wall of the Crowne Plaza Ballroom in Cherry Hill. So many of us were there to say “no” to a proposed pipeline conceived to send freshly fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania through the Pinelands to a coastal power plantContinueContinue reading “Eulogy for the Pinelands”
Holy, Holy Geese
I don’t think I can tell people enough that in Celtic iconography the Holy Spirit is often represented as a wild goose. To the Celts of ancient Ireland and Scotland, Ah Geadh-Glas (Wild Goose) was a more apt description of their experience of the Holy Spirit. How caged and docile is your experience with the HolyContinueContinue reading “Holy, Holy Geese”
Today, if you hear his voice 