The mountainside failed. But when we saw that deep spot the dead sun came back heavy as an engine and my pick rattled like a gun. The ice unravelled; we peeled it from his toothy face, glittering brown, a woody rubber round his mind, the Bronze Age still stuck to . . . . Continue Reading »
Eternity is uncorrupted light; the world proceeds by interrupting sight, exchanging day and night. Half the acts of earth avoid the sun; much that's done may be begun by day but end at night: aborted, buried light is customary here; it shocks no more than does a war such as the one we wage against . . . . Continue Reading »
What do the living know about the dead? I was called upon to wonder when the well-meaning camp director’s wife who knew parts of my family asked where I stood in relation to the brother who’d died, she had heard. Died? I said. Yes, I believe, cancer, she said. Oh, I said, that, I believe, was . . . . Continue Reading »
What do the living know about the dead? I was called upon to wonder when the well-meaning camp director’s wife who knew parts of my family asked where I stood in relation to the brother who’d died, she had heard. Died? I said. Yes, I believe, cancer, she said. Oh, I said, that, I believe, was . . . . Continue Reading »
Too often Truth is out of favor Softened To a fault Yet, I hold fast To Christ—the Contrast Who only yields As flavor Is revealed By . . . . Continue Reading »
Seven meters an hour, top speed, pulling closer the edge of asphalt you cannot see. Mizzling rain glistens your body stripped to the skin. You row, row for your life in air thick with whirlpools of danger. I cannot look at you without suffering your fragility. There reels from the morning sky a . . . . Continue Reading »
“ . . . saw little of note except . . . fortunately the Duomo was on that walk . . . ”: from a letter The Duomo cathedral hung its own weather above you. A light fog, full-massed as gray silk, hovered as a helicopter might for some yet-to-ascend saint. You heard noise where hidden workmen . . . . Continue Reading »
Slowly: out of that sleep that numbs the knife edge, I come home to a various world, to faces and voices, To a blur of angels at this keep, awaiting. Vague prophecies of life somewhat lasting, A testing of steadying heartbeat, of firm susperation. Such is the welcomed review of my waking, I, who . . . . Continue Reading »
“It is sometimes given to us, this lovely emptiness, and then the Holy Spirit can fill it . . . .” Madeleine L’Engle . . . and it happens, too, when words upon the printed page fall into place, and fit the moment and the heart and, by undivided Grace, what lies within, what lies . . . . Continue Reading »
With our cameras and crumpled clothes we wait for the bus. We rush to each “beauty spot” through narrow streets, observing signs whose alphabet we fail to comprehend. Pretty girls are scattered like rain. We pass students on bikes, old people stooped over bundles. The new “good life” of . . . . Continue Reading »
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