Author: Tim

• A Scene in the Death of Death

  A small group is assembled at a new grave, at dusk, in the late summer, in the country.  The priest: Our friend has died. Now first, the first command, to calm the newly dead: just rest, just lullaby, you son of man, and come aside a while; a while you cross your arms across your…

• Your First Prayer

  I’d rather have a Lover than orderly thoughts.

• Maundy Sermon

  Come now, let’s wash apostles’ feet then send them with the silver of the poor to multiply the blood and steal the bread, until He stuffs this harem with His fill of traitors killed by grace yet twitching, still. And such were all of you. Come now, let’s deputize convenient dogs to scour hedgerows, rummage…

• Sonnet: Puckish Meadows

  November wind I named a poltergeist, until today.   Please stay.   Your breath has blown my cover and exposed my own dark sprite: how cold is only cold when I’m alone, and wet is only clammy, only damp when I’m alone and naming adjectives and showers for my skin, my hands, my feet who…

• He Bruises But A Heel

  It is the property of angels not to fall, he said. It is the property of men to fall and rise. The devils fell.  Their property is not to rise. It is the property of God alone to fly headlong yet land upright — for God, he said, foremost of all the orders, plays. He…

• On Reading About Merton’s Death

  I cried what tears I had, then slept, and dreamed of saints who run their Jacob’s ladders down and up. “He does not suffer much”, one said. Not much?  I said.  Not much? Sweet brother, take my strict belief and buy yourself a better bed.

• Brendan’s Quest

  This land is leprous with the huts of men; Their radishes are crisp and strong but now this soil is wounded.   It is the sea that’s never wounded since it mends like Naaman’s flesh behind our wind-plow. Our fathers told the truth: “Ignore the images, my son: they’re barnacles of spirit holding you in harbor…

• Sassafras, Hazel, Arbutus

  On watching mother die at the nursing home.   Just once, an instant once in one whole life when winter lances membranes in the hazel leaves releasing waters from the bloods of red, just once the colors on the hills forget each other, blink, and shift to window chairs to stare the wind. Now this.…

• Not Many Things Are Needful

  Not many things are needful: peaches, silent, in blue stoneware; sunbeams, silent, on the sisal rug; roses, leaning, sipping from their vase. One thing left strewn from late last year would clutter all. So much is poised on where the roses sit; maybe on the bar, maybe on the hutch. So much is poised on…

• Grover’s Gourds, September

  When sap fills out these vines it sluices juice to dizzy tendrils turning airy curls with thirsty whorls; it climbs too high, then stops and drops and swells the gourds to pendulous tumescence. Stems are stretching, water-weighted, steeping cherokee beneath the sun. Early summer storms stormed up these roots, headstrong; then settled, though, at noons, in…