More on: Lent

The lake has a provisional name. It has had other names. It’s possible those names were also in some way provisional, unless the lake has a name for itself. Facing it, it’s feasible to believe that the lake really does have a name, one it has given to itself and that it keeps. It keeps…

The lake has a provisional name. It has had other names. It’s possible those names were also in some way provisional, unless the lake has a name for itself. Facing it, it’s feasible to believe that the lake really does have a name, one it has given to itself and that it keeps. It keeps…

If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. ___________________—Psalm 95 VI At first the thunder and rain defeat but then renew the ground and break it terribly open. Now even the dawn has heavy darkness in it, the sun, in silence seeming to refuse the sky, has heeded what was needed, to stun…

Holy Week again:             unleavened sky, all tensions held past hold. Mostly, what I feel is the unlikelihood. These days, pick a miracle,             there’s science to explain it. Say it’s nighttime in the Garden, Jesus praying in a bloody sweat: Hematidrosis—rare; not unknown—            …

LENT SHOULD BE in the summer that she might make use of the hotel pool, bandaged up outside like an open wound. She never had a pool. She had a cat but her cat is dead. Buried in leftover snow behind the garage until the ground softens. It would be nice to swim in a pool.…

————–Not the branches we cut each ————–windy March to hang with eggs ————–dyed red. Not those ————–we bless with palms ————–& smoke. These arced ————–spines & split limbs bud ————–through straining bark. Backs ————–humped & bent, bound. Does ————–God suffer these husked ————–velvet knobs? Stunted, ————–a wreath of tumors. ————–Yes, he does. Gather them ————–for…

The breakfast was adequate, the fast itself sub-par. We gluttons, having modified our habits only somewhat within the looming Lenten dark, failed quite to shake our thick despair, an air that clamped the heart, made moot the prayer. Wipe your chin. I’m dying here in Omaha, amid the flat, surrounded by the beefy, land-locked generations,…

New York At noon precisely, just as the bells began to ring, the white peacock in the garden of Saint John the Divine spread its glorious tail, making a rippling many-splendored sound, like a sibilant wind rushing through many leaves. The tips of its feathers, shaped like tiny V’s, reminded me of doves descending, the…