Through the arched colonnade
Of brick and glass
The sky draped, a cotton sheet
Of Easter blue
Forgotten on some larger being’s
Laundry line
Shuddering in the silent breeze.
The light ran down the glass
In golden waterfalls
Pooled into a thick, caustic shadow
Beneath the greying elms
Hunched into their years
Of watchkeeping
And whispering to their knees.
And where were you, reader,
When the first fingers of their minds
Crept up out of the wound of earth
And drank it in?
Continue readingCandlemas is a church feast with a long history whose roots at a later point tangle with both Groundhog Day and the feast of St. Brigid. Officially it is called the Feast of the Presentation, commemorating Christ’s presentation in the temple with both Anna and Simeon as witness.
The guiding image of Candlemas, as Simeon so beautifully sings, is Light – Christ’s “light to lighten the nations.” My recent book contains two poems centered around Candlemas, and I though in honor of the feast today I would share the second one with you.
Flame-thrown light tells you
what to do with this,
a labyrinth of interiority.
It will guide you out of
the sharp edged shadows
the rotten boards hidden
under the rug of strangeness
the creeping vine of doubts.
You throw salt over the side
of a crumbling wall
and you allow your eyes to become two
clear bells in the dark.
And candlelight reaches up
towards the night
as instinct tells you to raise your eyes
as the evening dusks
as a wisp of sparrows curl like smoke
above the trees.
Thank you all so much for your kind words of encouragement and overflowing support for Pilgrims I Have Been these past few months.
My greatest hope was that by sharing these words, they would be a spark, a point of connection in someone else’s life. I’m so grateful to hear that it has met you where you are, and connected to your own experience in some way.
I’m also excited to announce that several of the poems in Pilgrims have been selected by the Oregon Poetry Association to appear in their next anthology! I look forward to sharing several other places these poems will go in the coming months.
As we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, my prayer for us are these lines from “Table in the Wilderness”:
Let us keep our distance
From the castle-building and the silent stage.
Let us be the ones to watch
The two trees swaying in a cold wind,
To never number what we have been given.
Let us be the ones to open a table in our hearts
And say, “Welcome,”
And say, “Enough.”
At some point last year, I found myself surrounded by piles of finished and half-finished poems, sitting at a crossroads of sorts.
It was rare for me to be squeezing in this much writing on the edges of my other paid writing work, and I felt lucky. One by one I was harvesting a windfall of autumn fruit, and it was slowly piling up into baskets.
Not all of it was beautiful; some had worm holes right through them, others had grown into odd-looking shapes. But it was all there, mostly edible, piled up around me. And I felt at that moment confronted with a choice: do I simply let it sit here, and risk the chance of it going rancid? Or do I take the risk to give it away?
There is an inherent tension in art – and I’ll speak particularly to writing since it is what I know best. Continue reading
Here in my home state of Oregon, wildfires have become enormously destructive the past few weeks and caused many to flee their homes. I’ve been meditating this week on two related images: the burning bush (which in traditional iconography is seen as a symbol of Mary) and the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. This poem is written on behalf of, and mostly from the perspective of, all those who must flee home – whether because of war, wildfire, or any other danger.
Continue reading
I’m thrilled to give you this sneak peek of what’s coming October 1st!
My good friend Mary Gowen did an incredible job with the cover design, don’t you think?
It’s been a delightful project to be working on this summer and I’m so grateful to everyone who has pitched in a helping hand the past few months.
I can’t wait to share the finished product with you in only a few weeks!
“My deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.”
Henri Nouwen
When I began this poetry challenge in Summer 2019, the subtitle I had in mind was “A sacred journey through an ordinary year.” In many ways, this year was indeed filled with the ordinary stuff of life – like many of you, I worked two jobs to make ends meet, worried and schemed about the future, struggled with a mental health diagnosis, made new friends.
In other ways, however, it turned out to be a landmark year, including of course a worldwide pandemic, the largest civil rights movement in decades, and the complete reorganizing of our collective lives. I never could have expected the way that poetry would become, rather than an escape, a way to fully live through and experience all that this year would bring.
One year later, the Nouwen quote above still feels like the most appropriate way to describe how I view myself as an artist. I’m incredibly grateful for the gifts I have been given in this past year, and I hope in some small way these poems can be a gift to you as well. There are SO many I haven’t shared with you yet, and I’m extremely excited to be compiling them into a book that will be available by October 1st!
Even though this poetry challenge has come to a close, none of the opportunities presented to me each day have changed. Every moment is still transparent with possibility. Each person I meet is still a fellow-traveler with a story to tell.
The question remains: Can I remain open to being changed?
Recently I’ve been reminded of events that cause me to reflect on the past five years of our lives. It’s easy to look back and ask, What have we really accomplished?
In the emotions of this question I gain the tiniest glimpse of what it must be like to look back on seventy or eighty years of your life and say, I still have so much more left I would like to do. These infinite desires are not something to be squelched: they are the echoes of eternity within us. They tell us something about what it means to be human.
I think all of us in this season have had to reckon with, and rein in, our natural desires. Our desire to see or hold family members anytime; our desire for a casual trip to the market without planning and precautions; our desire to travel or work anywhere we want. Part of living a life well does mean learning to have mastery over our desires and finding contentment even in imperfect circumstances. Certainly this season has given us ample opportunities to practice this.
But I also think there is an essential piece of truth in the fact that God created man and woman as hungry beings. This cycle of hunger and fulfillment was not merely meant to be an inconvenience, a way of reminding us of our weakness and dependence upon the earth. It was not something that came after the fall, something we will “grow out of” in the new earth. In fact, eternity is often compared to a great feast.
Catherine of Siena writes about eternity: “But, in this way, hunger continues: Those who are hungry are satisfied, and as soon as they are satisfied, they hunger again. In this way their satisfaction is without disgust, and their hunger without suffering.
“Thus your desire is infinite, or otherwise it would be worth nothing.
…The only infinite thing you possess is the affection and desire of your souls.”
I’ve grappled with this idea in many of my poems this year because I want to learn to cultivate the right kind of hungers: the hunger for justice over serenity, the hunger for growth over predictability, the hunger for connection over insecurity. But most of all, I want to cultivate the kind of hunger that can only be satisfied by the Infinite.
Someday, if I get the chance to look back on my life fifty years from now, I want to be the one who says, What an incredible gift. But I also want to be the one to say, What’s next?
All your life stretches out before you
And you will never reach the end
Of the banquet table.
Welcome to the feast!
Downwind of Grace 