Yield
By Poetry Issue 95
Yield is spring’s withered apple blossom ———evolving into fall’s rosy fruit. Yield is the dry grass under our feet ———softening in dew, and summer drought abated ———-by a week of steady rain. It’s the snowmelt stream shaping itself ———-to the rocks in its path. Yield is when, besieged by a poem, you ———are taken hostage…
Read MoreDaybreak, Winter
By Poetry Issue 87
Now light fills the tree outside our window— tree whose fruit, when it comes, only the birds, and just a few of them, want to eat, tree that turns stiff and dry midsummer, rushing the season, so we fear the city will come and butcher it, though so far it’s been spared because in spring…
Read MorePsalm for the January Thaw
By Poetry Issue 64
Blessed be God for thaw, for the clear drops that fall, one by one, like clocks ticking, from the icicles along the eaves. For shift and shrinkage, including the soggy gray mess on the deck like an abandoned mattress that has lost its inner spring. For the gurgle of gutters, for snow melting underfoot when…
Read MoreName and Nature
By Poetry Issue 82
Your name, Jesus, is childhood in the body, at times a single malt upon the tongue, Vivaldi to the ears; your name, Christ, forgiveness to the heart, acceptance to the flesh, a troubled joy across the soul; at ever my very best I will plead to you, closest to me, for kindness. Perhaps the silence…
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