In advent and the beginning of a new year, I tend to think a lot about birth and the many rebirths we experience as we accept the sacred in our lives. At first glance I almost thought this was a prose poem. However, the subtle line breaks create an interesting form and cadence that compliment…

As I was looking over Image’s website analytics at the end of 2016, I confess that I was overcome with affection and gratitude for you, our online readers. Your attention has painted a picture, and it is a significantly different picture than many other outlets show. The New Yorker, for example, introduced their most-reads thus: “Americans, as…

This poem moves me and impresses me with its sense of almost-but-not-quite arriving at connection. Everywhere I turn within the walls of this poem, I come face to face with human need and the world’s shortcomings in meeting that need. Mourning her mother, the speaker attempts throughout the poem to do a simple thing: light…

A delightful scene is set in this poem. At the start of the new year, the speaker and some friends are doing volunteer woodwork to repair their church’s altar. As the speaker details the steps of their careful work, we’re carried along by the poem’s base rhythm of iambic pentameter. Soon religious language enters the…