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To be human is to find patterns to
make patterns Day fades in its yellows & blues to deeper hues light decreasing to darkness only to again burst forth at daybreak One muser marvels at a nautilus shell while an old luthier sculpts violin viola cello & bass for musicians to pluck rapid sixteenth notes from A farmer combs furrows into fertile land a walker leaves her even footprints on the sand & a little child arranges his tiles by colour as a poet does with words -- D.S. Martin is Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College, and Series Editor for the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. He has written six poetry collections, including The Role of the Moon (Paraclete, 2025), Angelicus (2021), and Ampersand (2018). He and his wife live in London, Ontario.
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Earth is hard outside the gate,
bitter plants will grow-- shrunken fruit brittle stem rotten root thistle and soot, words as sharp as thorns. When angels guard the garden door, there is no going back. Rain falls hard outside the gate, poured from an ashen sky. Never again a gentle mist the dappled light a self-forgetful kiss. Never our call and His welcome reply. When holy terror stops our cry, there is no going back. I keep this memory in heart: a good day’s work the whispering air toes in the stream soft bed of fern; my forehead on his shoulder bare the edges of a dream the quiet of our sweet return. * * * a short walk, some small talk and Did God really say? * * * Hearts grow hard outside the gate, cracking jars of clay of beetles and snakes maggot and worm shatter and break; assign the blame turn and flee shiver and shame belong to me. Send good news outside the gate, past the altar stained with blood, find us on this sun-cracked mud. Crush this demon gliding after me, lead me to a better door, a different tree. -- Brianne Holmes lives in Upstate South Carolina where she works in marketing and communications. In 2016, she earned a Master of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from East Carolina University. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including the North Carolina Literary Review, Relief, Solum Journal, As Surely As the Sun Literary, Underwood Press and Heart of Flesh Literary Journal. I’ve never felt like this before. The doors
open around me, and I can choose the way to go. So I will learn where this path leads: uphill and hidden between the trees, which roar like traffic – no, like streams – when the north wind blows, scattering shadows of silence, its winter seeds, into mossy shade and jagged steps that bend through stony walls and sunlight. The slope descends, and I look out on fields of fog and snow where, below, I will wade through pools as high as my knees or higher. Where will I go? Where am I now? When winter ends, how will the forest sound? But I don’t have to know, and that’s just why I am not lost: Everything here is found. Fed up with reflections and illusion
I am begging for something real-- To be alone in the kitchen at half past seven With flour on my knuckles, The nitty-gritty nascence of a feast. I want to bow my head, my heart, my whole body. I want to be completely hollowed Into hallowed ground, the divot That Moses wore away with kneeling-- Ash-stricken by the flames ahead, but holy. Hold me in some tangible embrace! Cast out the dark; cut every veil in two. Enter me incarnate, in bread and wine And weighty waiting, a patience renewed By reality, a glimpse of something true. -- Ava Pardue is a young poet studying at Wheaton College. Her work has been published in Christianity Today and The Christian Century and has been recognized by various groups including the Wells Young Poets Awards and the Wheaton Lowell-Grabill Prize. These mountains are in my bones--
both calcified spines, straight lines from head to heart. I sit in solitude and listen, bask in what He’s given. When I grow quiet, I learn that just beyond the wood-line, there is bird-swell: cardinals and wrens, jays and sparrows, chattering back and forth in endless creation-song-- bursting with verve in my repose-- among the ancient spruce and pines. And here, just beyond the blue mountain’s crest, a faithful train chugs west through the valley, and its longing whistle adds to the chorus of nature’s endless hymns. I come here to learn, to go low-- to be voiceless and see anew, to shed the scales I can’t see through. I have come here to disappear into it-- to be stripped of my self-obsession, to find a Truer Country-- when I dare to be still and know: the mighty ridge, the thick verdant forest of life, the lush rhythms of a coming spring. I have come to know God’s hours and his canvas for myself, to rest and wait in this quietude for the sunset, moonlight, and midnight stars to shine-- unencumbered by the city noise and city lights, unsheathed from my former self-- so I might watch it all unfold like the miracle it is: God stooping-- even here and ever still-- to paint the sky, all golden-grace and fire-glow, and to fill the air with a song for my silence. -- Kimberly Phinney is an award-winning professor and writer. She is the founder of TheWayBack2Ourselves.com. Kimberly holds her M.Ed. in English and is a doctoral candidate in Community Care and Counseling. Her work appears in Christianity Today, Ekstasis, Solum, and more. Her poetry collections, Of Wings and Dirt and Exalted Ground, were bestsellers. Her forthcoming book on art and faith debuts with Baker Books in 2027. She’s a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, Audience Choice Award winner with Ekstasis (now Inkwell), and runner-up in Fathom’s Poetry Contest. She was featured on Good Morning America for a national teaching award. Instagram: @kimberlyphinneywriter. Substack: https://thewayback2ourselves.substack.com/. The prayers crack like skin.
There never is enough spirit. Imagine the drip of it, the last of the flow in a thin line saved in an elderly woman’s flat, dark hand. Sometimes, the sudden rush of life. I splash my right hand into the pool and anoint myself with the sign of the cross. My wife holds our son over the waters -- after men women children for miles, years around slip in, jump in, dunk their heads -- and dips his frantic feet naked but for his nappy, and in the chapel I pray that even if he is not healed the blessing would sing over his whole life. -- after 'Blessing' by Imtiaz Dharker He was an extraordinary talker,
but he was not arrogant, conceited, or proud. His words painted the world with love and kindness, rather than charm and vanity. The beauty was always inside of him. Without the Light, you could only see its outline in the shadows. But with the Light's illumination, the kaleidoscope within came forth, speaking life into dead places, reflecting the Maker's radiance and His skillful shift of the mirrors in us to create something new. -- Madison is a biomedical researcher and emerging poet living in Virginia. Her work explores themes of love and loss and has appeared in Grande Dame Literary. with the parts of our soul
that submit, laying down on dark altars? the parts that giggle and groan and weep, beneath and behind glass frames? the parts that beat trowels into daggers and burn all the seeds, take mallets and chisels into the mines to wound, steal, be stripped and stained, to bleed alongside others in shadow? Why do we pretend they are hidden? Have they finally closed their mouths? Are they sitting quietly in cold sad corners, unseen and unheard? No. The feeblest dissemblers among us cannot keep them chained. They come screeching, smashing all our fables, hurling fire on each new name. Perhaps they slink and sneak to meet the One who hums-- “I will sprinkle you with hyssop. I will wash you. I will make you whiter than snow.” Perhaps they hope against the dark their offerings might be redeemed? Maybe we should bring them out to meet Him? -- Blake Kilgore is the author of Leviathan (Hapless Hip Books, 2021), a collection of poems wrestling with faith and doubt. He teaches history and coaches basketball during the workday and tries his best to love his wife and four sons when he goes home. His writing has appeared in many fine journals, recently including Vita Poetica, Fare Forward and Pensive: A Literary Journal of Spirituality and the Arts. You can find out more at blakekilgore.com. Each year the house was solemnly blessed
with colored chalk on the door jamb and header, a bloodless script to set this dwelling apart. In the bleak midwinter a large candle of beeswax was left lighted on the front window sill as a beacon for others in the footsteps of the Posada. In this ordinariness were also folio pages of a paper Bible taped to the glass, not as elegant as a Gutenberg in a museum’s showcase that had its pages in both volumes turned every day, but bright with devotion as our prayers rose up and fell like angels on an extended work ladder. Daily prayers were repeated so quickly, one after another, that some would think it was arcane gibberish, but it was instead a shibboleth test of the true heart. Some of the wealthy and even libraries cut out the richly illuminated head letters from broken books, sold as individual pages to increase profits in sales. Outside in this orderly suburban neighborhood no one thinks they need to find a place of safety, and no effort is required to find their daily bread. But I am the one neighbor who lights a bright candle that flickers and then moves it toward the window while I draw back the curtains as a new day begins. -- Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught classes on the history of Christianity and on global religions for almost forty years. He lives now in a small village that is near a nature conservancy, a green cemetery and Amish farms. The fire at the end of the day
roars like the distant sea. The logs are almost ashes now that once were mighty trees. But with the wind and heat within, they glow as if alive, like Adam in the holy garden clothed with Breath and light. There was a bush that burned, I've heard, but never was consumed. There was a Man who, after death, shook off his empty tomb. He said that if I 'take and eat' him, I too will never die. Let me become a bush that burns with everlasting life. |