Author: Tim

• God Has No Use For Us

  I wrote a little verse today, my friend says “what’s it play?” Just wind it up, I say, and watch it dance away.

• My Resumé

  I’ve talked of poetry beneath the summer stars. I had a Form to take my pen. I heard the Holy Ghost correct my spelling, and I heard Him recommend Dante. I have known the operation of the Blood of Christ in conversation, at the kitchen table and I saw the sword protruding from the preacher’s…

• Spring Hill Cemetery

  1. Walking on this hill of graves and trees I find the stone of Talitha beside the church now only used to mark the spring’s return of jonquils from the underworld. I stop to see her stone beside her mom’s,  on no-one’s map. What bells that baby girl could surely laugh. 2. A hundred-forty Easters since that…

• Moonseed, Ampelopsis, Possumgrape

  The sun withdraws its tide of liquid gold along the goldenrod, the sumac fronds by now November red (think blood, weeks old) and up the sharp-as-switches willow wands. Against the Appalachian dusk the gnats are lit like photon swarms above the ponds. My father parts the weeds to squint at slats in leaves — the…

• Risen, Indeed: An Easter Responsive Reading

  R = Reader C = Congregation R: They laid him where? C:  Not here, come look. R:  But have you seen the Lord? C:  Oh yes, we’ve seen the Lord. R:  Is He alive? C:  He walked the road with us. R:  But did He speak? C:  He spoke, and burned our hearts. R:  But…

• Voices Of Apocalypse

  We thought once Law was killed we’d loafon lawns composing tight haiku. Instead we’re shownas were-hyenas tearing our own breathing youngas God stares down, repenting of His workso bathed in baby blood. His sabbaths stacked in locked backroomsnow tumble down from heaven’s shelvesand clatter galaxies about.  In fact,A third of golden stars go black,A third…

• My Time

  A corpse in the road to Judah. A seated lion and a yawning ass. The locusts chant one systole a minute and I thirst.  Too long, and trust won’t do; I need the Holy Ghost. As men mark time I shouldn’t mark,  I’m told, but martyred souls enjamb the very Throne with metered stops.  …

• Sonnet To The Holy Ghost: 1

  Some say they’ve seen you, seen a maybe ghost,a shred of stranded autumn fog at duskamong autistic trees, inert, at mostso mildly touching, and never being touched.Some say they’ve heard you, say you hum and broodlike pigeons wait out rains beneath the eavesrehearsing unimportant coos, till shooedby bb guns or brooms or squads of blowing…

• Sonnet To The Holy Ghost: 2

  The Baptist sees you wing from past the sun,from off the waters where the world had beenbut now where worlds lie drowned, where nonebut floating dead are all you’ve seen of menwhile searching for a solid dock for God —but now, regale the Father’s ark with news!Like daring buds on Aaron’s dying rod,a flash of…

• Sonnet To The Holy Ghost: 3

  Apostles heard you rumble like the gospel caged: a thrum like fourfold beasts in martial ranks or Jordan bound a mile upstream, enraged, and thrashing to and fro against her banks. Apostles felt you set their hair on fire, flash down provincial brainstems to their lungs then up again as sermons sweet like lyre but…