What is Essential

Dead trees know, being

wind-taught and carved

by time. No longer desparate

wih foliage, their sap

clotted, roots unclenching,

they point flayed trunks,

unburdened of all

save one or two branches,

like Chinese characters

brushed upon the rice paper sky

or spastic crosses.

It costs them everything.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Revival of Patristics

Stephen O. Presley

On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…

The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics

Itxu Díaz

Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…

The trouble with blogging …

Joseph Bottum

The trouble with blogging, RJN, is narrative structure. Or maybe voice. Or maybe diction. Or maybe syntax.…