Timothy Murphy

for Bryan Stotts, District Ranger This is the shoreline of a glacial lakebed. Some of its flora, fauna are endangered. Not so the leafy spurge, vile interloper, the milkweed puffing cotton to the breezes. Not so the cottonwoods or dwarfish scrub oaks, the white-tail deer that multiply like . . . . Continue Reading »

Alan riding his first horse from Big Sandy to celebrate his thirty-seventh birthday: his mare reared in the lodgepoles when a spruce grouse flushed and nearly pitched him down a switchback. My own gelding stampeded through a meadow, and our young wrangler called those ponies “gentled.” We . . . . Continue Reading »

Wrongly thinking that beauty lay without, blindly I cast about. How late did I begin to realize your beauty lay within. To one bereft of sight you said Let there be light. Thus to my deafened ear you called, you cried! hoping that I might hear. I thirsted, hungered, yearned. You touched me, and I . . . . Continue Reading »

I've no faith in the power of my prayer. Grant me the grace to phrase a psalm of thanks and praise from one who lists among his sins despair. . . . . Continue Reading »

We worshipped moon and sun, comets, the circling stars, Venus and bloodstained Mars, ignorant of our duty owed to the unnamed one, kindler of every beauty and fire by which we find the hand, the designing mind of heaven’s artisan. . . . . Continue Reading »

"Translations are like lovers: There are those that are beautiful but untrue¯and those that are true but unbeautiful."An old saw, perhaps, but I first heard it from the poet Dick Davis, himself a talented translator from medieval Persian . Nonetheless, we live in a glorious age for . . . . Continue Reading »

Pierce the Eye of the Needle no caravan can pass. Ride without a saddle a colt, the foal of an ass. A potter will leave his treadle, a mason white with grout kneel to kiss your sandal, and all the stones cry out. . . . . Continue Reading »

I tell you this tale as I mull and marvel how the Almighty metes to mankind the blessings of reason, rule, and realm. He arranges it all. For a time He allows the mind of a man to linger in love with earthly honors. He offers him homeland to hold and enjoy, a fort full of fighters, men to command . . . . Continue Reading »