Love can be the force field
in front of you
and prayer the
supply chain at the back
Tag Archives: poetry
Conclusions drawn about the tragic shortsightedness of others / Insufficient attention given to my own
Yes, again.
To one entombed in one’s own webby darkness
It wouldn’t in this case be
a matter of extraction,
the external light of rescue
blasting and dissolving the shell,
but rather recognition and activation
of the love writ large
in your being,
God’s love for you,
the love you’ve yet to use
Nights of faith
Well, you have your pillow of stone and
the hip thrown out,
the light in Antony’s cave,
Joseph’s twisting,
Joan’s gloaming,
and a river flowing past
the dead in the ground.
Our neighbors’ tree has died
It seems ominous, an omen.
Whither the leaves, whither the wood?
Goes all, goes all, in this final final fall!
My dad saw Aunt Bess
In a dream
walking with a stick
on a mountaintop.
“She spoke with the dead,”
he said.
“Just like me.”
“That makes three,”
Janke said,
“for you do too.”
And yes, I guess it’s true.
I’ve gathered up the spiritual bullets at least
Snatched from the air what was headed
your and my way, ensnaring and melting
them into the ghostly ploughshare I use
to prepare this common ground
Is in my heart a dam
Would God but break it down
Readiness in light of a simple discernment
Love is not a scrubby little power we muster,
a scrambling to order affairs according to our
own perception of goods (that scaffolding we build
to lift our heart to heaven), but rather
concession of the self to the power that would
remake us, were we to allow it, into the giving
person we always hoped we’d be. I say:
Bring it on!
All the problems make
A pyramid of rocks
upside down
on top of your head
Utrecht Journal 