More on: Poetry

The sound of water over rocks is grace descending The sound of animals in the distance is the future coming toward us The sound of light sliding over light is God’s name being whispered to us The sound of a door swinging open on its hinges is our entrance into his garden There all sounds…

1 The cloak of the saint was filled with roses The cloak of the saint rose above the city The cloak of the saint was thrown over the back of a chair it slowly filled with a human form it was filled with the sound of wind It floated down the mountainside sheep it passed…

pace Thomas Merton When you pray, let your tongue taste the words it forms, and let your mind watch the meanings forming. This will paralyze your prayers, but it will stop your meaningless recitations. Next, as you pray to God, think about his omniscience, his power, his goodness and the problem of theodicy. This too…

I look out from a convenience-store doorway, just off a mid-summer Indiana exit, to where he stretches halfway under our truck— body flush against the days of oil and dust washed and unwashed away. He scans the underside to find a leak that trickles from beneath the axle and metal sheltering our children who stir…

I couldn’t wrap my mouth around the vowel of your name. Your name, a cave of blue wind that burrows and delves endlessly, that rings off the walls of my drumming, lilting heart, through the tiny pulsations of my wrists, the blood in my neck. I couldn’t hold the energy of your name in my…

Bernheim Forest Today’s forest floor, a terrazzo of copper leaf. The remaining scrub also copper: copper breath, penny breath, too faint to call it rustling. The mother trees of summer— those iron lungs—streamed oxygen from paps that swayed sweet rock-a-byes in green blouses. But now all is brittle air. Underfoot snap and crack. And all…

I will my soul to waken, and my soul does not wake. My mind busies itself, remembering forgotten songs from my adolescence. My mind recalls anything, so as not to listen. I will my hands to be calm, Lord, and they fly to my teeth to crease my nails. Lord, I will myself to be…

Cape Breton Facing the east was the cliff dropping sixty feet to the sea: a rock- face frozen in the slow-motion act of falling. A shirred schist. A Parkinson’s of stone—sheer and delicate as a chiton carved by a Greek. Sweeping back from the cliff, a slope of steep green. Empty but for a spattering…

Where the Lord lives in heaven, is he lonely? Does our Father walk his marble floors without the company of anyone righteous? Who alone is venerable enough to keep the Lord company? My voice is small, yet I call to your house, Lord. Does the wind enter your chambers and rooms, cold and empty? Where…

Speak to me about the presence of absence. Not everything created can be seen. As the uncreated may be glimpsed from a slant. What we bring is attention— prayer in our hands, spirit in our lungs. Emptiness—but a focus on what borders and frames the space— what the space is filled by. Nothing empty of…