Category: Poems
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Responsive Reading: Dreams
R = ReaderC = Congregation R: In dreams I wander, lost. C: Come to me. R: In dreams I strain to stop. C: If you are weary. R: In dreams my feet won’t run. C: And heavy laden. R: In dreams my grades are bad. C: I’ll give you R: Rest? All: And Rest.
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3 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Hypostases: there must be three,Since dyads, lacking we, must always come undone.There must be three, for each enactment of the joyMust be in turn rejoiced (or what’s it for?)And joy itself must be itself adoredAs slowly as omnipotence allows,by gestures of high court,but all competing for the helpmeet role. There must be one, each living…
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Behold The Wondrous Way
The way of a moss on a stone.The way of a ship in a wave.The way of a boy with a girl. Now I’ve considered all these waysand made contention in my thoughtsthat all who sing beneath our sunand all who snore beneath our moonare just to be beheld, beheld in silence,silence of…
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I Am Among The Cows
Christmas Eve, 2020 Yes, cows do kneel at midnight in the creche,one minute panting hymns upon the Child,the next they amble back to pastures lit by starswho peer, a-giggle, over crests of hillsto spy into the shadowed stable for their presents. I am among the cows, I have believed.I have adjured the devil and his…
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Holy Saturday, Morning
I can’t recount my movements.My memory’s milk-blurred,My corneas are blinked with milkand slurried milk and honeyfurs my tongue on wakingas I lick a bruise inside my thumb. My palm still feels a hilt.Along my brow I finda fingered cross in honeyand I find I’m born amnesiac,indicted, that I must have donethat thing that hurt that…
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Colors From Miller’s Fork
Green: The sheen persimmons leave on teeth. Red: The stripe when rhubarb’s ripe. White: When heifer pails her milk. Red: Her teats when city cousins try. Black: The snake who spooks the dogs. Red: The largest crawdad’s claws. Silver: …
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What I Saw When We Passed In The Hall At Church
To Barbara_ I see you’ll speak pre-Raphaelite to mewith words long cosseted away, such wordsI’d thought were shot along the Somme. I see your hair and think of “tress”, and howthe poses those old painters loved are full of you,and how that curl along your back is why that dress. I cannot picture what your…
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Mockingbird
For Barbara. “I wonder where the mockingbird is from, and where it went.” You said. You’re Job, I said, when Yahweh sphinxes him for fun. You said “It came a second night but then last night was gone.” Job blanked, I said, on when the mountain-goats give birth,He blanked on where Leviathans cross seas,He blanked…
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The Boundered Lip
My father, from his hospice bed, looked off into the distance and led a church service for an unseen congregation. I scribbled down his words and phrases as he moved in and out of coherence. After this, no more words. He died a day later. So son, now come on up and sing, we’ll wait.…
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Today I Waltz This Pot
(Barbara, Christmas 2013) If you put all my joy over all our pots together, It would not touch how I feel about this cast-iron pot. Let all my joy from all our pots be plopped together and it slops around, with room, inside this iron pot. I never thought I’d find a black utensil packed…