More on: nature

“I didn’t get in trouble whenever I drank, but whenever I got in trouble I was drinking,” says Wayne. We’re sitting together with ten inmates in folding chairs. I like Wayne, I like his thinking, I even like his God and his prayers. The herd of Morgan horses in his pasture comes alive with light…

We planted the seeds in the spring And up they came innocuous as crabgrass. The tomatoes soon lorded over them, And even the jalapenos, sad lumps Hanging from their limbs like mittens From children playing in the snow. They stayed that way all summer, And before the frosts of November We pulled them up, declaring…

The sea wind whispers and the tall oaks shake, their leaves shimmering in the August noon. And now the dry grass wrinkles and the floorboards flame. Saffron motes, a distant bird cry, this brackish sea. What was it you figured the wind might say? The oaks sway gently this way and that. Like young girls…

We are walking in the mild midwinter Snow and thin ice, up Coldwater Creek, Its many tributaries, their steep ravines Tracing the blue and brown lines that wind Dizzily over the unfolded whiteness of our new Map like staves for the crazy earth song we’ve been Sight-reading with our feet; we are singing the impossible…

Abstain from staring too long at the sky. Stick to screens, little keyboards; block out birds with private earbuds; never hear the wind breathe harder. Watch TV. Always drive. Try to avoid a night outside in ladled moonlight, glowing broth. Eschew solitude; cut back on silence; call up someone just to gossip; send lots of…

Why do you call me good? Everything is good: me, you, the boy waving the gun: I hear him now, crying in the arroyo: I saw the car rolled and tried to help, but the boy with the gun was afraid and fired: the rattlesnake is good, the saguaro, the rabbit: the blood of strangers…

The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…

The thing about nature is it doesn’t need coaching. Fire flares true, first strike out of a match. Infant waterfalls sing like experts. Acorns squeeze out oaks, each leaf a born breather. Even Darwin’s mutations. Paragons. Every one a prima donna, a first fiddle. _____________So is it not strange— child of nature that I am—to…

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. I think of that line again as blossoms blow with rain. Beyond the orchard someone sings. Birds cant their heads to ask if this is the tree they remember, if the refugee finds refuge, truly. Steam rises off the pond; or is it a cordite fog,…

It is March; in Ireland daffodils will be suffering the harshest winds; here the coach had turned back from the slopes of the Beatitudes towards Tiberias; to the right the valleys, green and flush, rising to the hills; to the left, the lake, quietened in an evening lull and pleasuring; I settled in my seat,…