Category: Poems
-
Haiku 4
Silence, yours, not mine: the noonday demon. What ground I have hated I have hated, said God. But alelluia is the desert’s song, the hermits say.
-
A Scene In The Death of Liturgy
The cedars are a green near black: the green of weathered wreaths, the black of twilit tea. The storm is black. Though usually unseen from here , tonight it’s all we see: each tree just seems a thunderhead, engorged. The black of water on the monuments makes marble-grays seem light, seem day, seem kind behind…
-
Advent 2016
Hollies and the concubines of hollies decked with berried pompadours and berried waists await their Christmas casting calls. Another summer slides asleep into a poem, but betrothals start at clock-change. Distant kings are troubled. Starlights jumble and begin to elbow to the front. Merried, berried, follied flipper-flappered hollies and the concubines of hollies listen for…
-
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…
-
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.