Brian Doyle

Some time ago I was in a confessional booth whenThere was a moment I never experienced before orSince. It was a lovely terrible haunting moment andI continue to think there was something wonderfullyHoly about it. We’d paused in our conversation, thePriest and me, and then he covered his face with . . . . Continue Reading »

I think that was the first time in my entire life that I understood that sin was real. Continue Reading »

Once again a child asks me suddenly What is a poem?,And once again I find myself riffing freely and happilyWithout the slightest scholarly expertise or knowledge;But I am entranced by how poems can hint and suggestAnd point toward things deeper than words. A poem isAn owl feather, I say. It’s not . . . . Continue Reading »

Only say the word and I shall be healed. Isn’t that the most humble unadorned thing you can say about faith? Don’t you always say that with a shiver in your heart? The hair prickles on my head sometimes when I say that. Continue Reading »

But if you looked at the map closely you would notice towns with names like Hohokus, and Buttzville, and Ong’s Hat, and clearly those were goof names, which made you suspect that there was actually no such thing as New Jersey, that New Jersey was an idea, an illusion, a conspiracy, a deft jest perpetrated by cartographers in their cups and now accepted as wholly real by all sorts of people. Continue Reading »

Marriage and monastic life share many pleasures, pains, and conundrums. Every day you have to walk into the thicket of your promise again. Continue Reading »

By chance I was in New York City seven months after September 11, and I saw a moment that I still turn over and over in my mind like a puzzle, like a koan, like a prism. I had spent the day at a conference crammed with uninformed opinions and droning speeches and stern lectures, and by the evening I . . . . Continue Reading »

Among my first memories in this wondrous world were brittle palm fronds folded reverently behind the four crucifixes in our childhood home. Continue Reading »

“I would suggest that you not consider marriage again until you are at least ten years old.” Continue Reading »

As I am sitting at the stoplight under the maple and oak and cedar treesI see three tiny kids skiffling and shuffling and skittering and scufflingIn the leaves—bigleaf maples, mostly, but also some oak, and a seriousDrift of fir and cedar needles—duff is the word for that, a delicious one,Is it . . . . Continue Reading »