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Sunday worship
songs about Pentecost the oak tree waits for our visit and when we glide down into the ravine the jubilee shakes through her leaves these cattails beneath her were once woven to hold baskets of food on the day the Creator built His bridges over creeks and deep into our hearts -- Casey Mills writes poems early in the morning while his kids sleep. He lives in Northern California next to a creek he enjoys spending time with. His poetry has been published in Heart of Flesh, As Surely As the Sun, Ekstasis, Radix, Spirit Fire Review and elsewhere. You can read more of his poems at caseymillspoems.com.
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The pull that flesh exerts
this season feels suspended. For days the rain sheeted, damping the cold dirt. Dry and dormant things gasped for air underground in tunnels running near and around buried roots. A line of leafless trees swayed at a meadow's edge; a field of pale grass lies flat in shearing winds, a low, hollow lallation against a stinging silence that smothers human sounds. Cold to the touch, this land of immense disappearances, where dusk had stalled and squeezed breath from the sky, encompasses us, alone together, turning our senses, the broken bits we use to know ourselves, the raw force, tight as a bud, we feel will burst out in full, seducing flowers, sprung alive from our bodies. -- Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught courses on Early, Medieval, Reformation and Modern Christianity. He lives in a small village in the heartland of Ohio, surrounded by a nature conservancy and Amish farms. Picture an empty rowboat
under the night sky: a refuge, our means of escape in a vessel yet to be filled—rocking, beckoning—nudged along by invisible currents . . . Or perhaps, the kingdom is more like a man in the boat, flat on his back in a dark place, broken, alone—his oars, shipped—taking in saving light from a heavenly body that died before reaching him . . . And this, as well: the kingdom of God is a stranger kneeling beside him, who says, Friend, we are water stirred with love and the siftings of spent stars. It is like saying, Let the waves come . . . then grasping a hand, becoming, together, a constellation—perhaps the next dipper, spilling quicksilver, shore to shore. -- Laurie Klein is the author of a chapbook (Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh) and two collections (House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life and Where the Sky Opens). A recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and a Pushcart nominee for poetry as well as prose, she lives on the brow of a rural hill overlooking an ancient apple tree and mercurial woodland pond. For the first time in thirty-four years, small green apples festoon the limbs. It feels like a sign . . . I have loved the night. I have loved its shade
Of darkly colors: a true lovely sight. I have walked in dark, and his have been made. Forgetting the light, I have loved the night. In the midnight hour, I reflected deep On promises lost, and on love asleep. The night outreached my will, all the world was ripe; Unconscious, unwilling: I loved the night. I have brought the world's hope to her altar Libations of void, death-offerings rite. I have thought despair overtook all wars; Then darkness covered the earth. And the night, Clear and radiant, bright, glorious, wrapped in light, Gave me deeper hopes, and a baby's cry. -- Yannick Imbert teaches theology in southern France at Faculté Jean Calvin. He is a Tolkien scholar and publishes books and articles at the intersection of theology and culture. He has also published online in Transpositions, Ekstasis, Macrina, Inklings Studies and other theological journals. He writes in French at delagracedansencrier.com. We have reached the brink
where anger morphs and headlong words are spiked gloves propelling us down the chute as if we are a luge veering off its line—my “How could you?” inciting your, Not again! “But you never—” Just leave it, I hate you I hate you—and how we rocket through blind curves, half-flattened by shock, and my jaw locks, maybe yours too, except, sucked into one long blur, steeled against ice, it seems nothing slows runaway pride save the tundra of self- loathing, much farther down near the end of the run, where, yes, good Lord, there . . . out of nowhere . . . hear it? A birdlike call to mirth. -- Laurie Klein is the author of a chapbook (Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh) and two collections (House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life and Where the Sky Opens). A recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and a Pushcart nominee for poetry as well as prose, she lives on the brow of a rural hill overlooking an ancient apple tree and mercurial woodland pond. For the first time in thirty-four years, small green apples festoon the limbs. It feels like a sign . . . perhaps suggesting
test every rope (oars too) or hand over hand every day let down the anchor and catch forty winks or row row in the name of simply messing about . . . through doldrums and lightning and hold close your hope that the rabbi (who once closed his eyes in the stern) promised never to shift eternity’s gaze up and aweigh -- Laurie Klein is the author of a chapbook (Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh) and two collections (House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life and Where the Sky Opens). A recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and a Pushcart nominee for poetry as well as prose, she lives on the brow of a rural hill overlooking an ancient apple tree and mercurial woodland pond. For the first time in thirty-four years, small green apples festoon the limbs. It feels like a sign . . . A walled-off acre
filled with corridors of flowers and herbs and healing plants seemed that it had come from paper packages of seeds a Shaker Eldress made. Vines and curling tendrils rose up straight so like a straight-back chair ascends, a final ladder angels climb to heaven amidst the foliage of a city hiding holy beings. Disheveled weeds in pandemonium have spread across embankments and beyond my sight with speckled butterflies and birds. A simulacrum of our place of first beginnings, now with insistent fists of fuchsia of vivid shades of violet. The garden is a vestibule to a house of plenty, where on an antique table a still-life lingers for a day. And spiders in their own mythic anonymity have spun a gauze that covers everything from a long abandoned wedding, a raiment only worn by ghosts. And in recesses of my broken head deeper darkness hints at dawn, as it catches light and then ignites the vision of a widened world that weds both gift and grace that will return me to the garden I will then get lost in. -- Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught courses on Early, Medieval, Reformation and Modern Christianity. He lives in a small village in the heartland of Ohio, surrounded by a nature conservancy and Amish farms. Have you stood silently
surrounded by the crescent sweep of planted daffodils and abundant lilies-of-the-valley with an angel at the gate guardian of the garden keeping out despair? Or seen hydrangea globes let direct sunlight change their palette of pastels? Walk beside the chosen rocks that are a threshold from grass to flower beds and the stones scooped out with water pockets that draw the thirsty birds. This is a sight to slake my own deep thirst. Beside a day-lighted stream and granite steps moisture-loving plants abound and there, look quickly, is a peacock in the shade displaying a hundred eyes watching over our steps -- Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught courses on Early, Medieval, Reformation and Modern Christianity. He lives in a small village in the heartland of Ohio, surrounded by a nature conservancy and Amish farms. Gracie sits beside me at the pot-luck luncheon.
She wears lacy half-sleeves to cover her tattoos now that she is born again. Those arms flash out in frustration toward my piled-high plate when I compliment her string-bean casserole, and I mean it—it is good. “No,” she insists. “If it hadn’t sat in the church kitchen through the long morning service, with moisture gathering under the foil, the onions on top would have stayed crispy. Instead they’re mushy. I just wish you could’ve tasted it before.” I understand. Once, my offering was at its finest, fresh, poised, and able like crisp onions. Now I am unseemly, white, and frayed, my song like soggy bellows. I aged out of freshness in my turn, as happens after decades of long services spent under foil. Yet, as I live, something tasty may persist, and while I wish you could’ve tasted it before, this is what I have to share anymore. -- Michelle Shelfer and her husband, Jerry, operate a non-profit called Prepare a Room Ministries, which seeks to help those hurt by abortion and disciple the next generation to embrace life and the Giver of life. Her poetry has been published in Ekstasis, Penwood Review and Solid Food Press. Her poetic themes often centre around motherhood. She can be found at michelleshelfer.substack.com/ and on social media at @preparearoom. Splintered bones set hard, out of place.
I limp among those I cherish, gripping onto furniture, before I sit, defeated. From the crucifix, your steadfast eyes say, What’s mine is yours. To offer this pitted stone—my heart—is pain; but you do not take a hammer. Quiet light penetrates, halos me, burns the muscle-memory that mires my feet. How cheap the word miracle—one step, and now immersed in grace, I stride, serene, across the river’s bridge. The agony was always yours. The pasture greens. Your breath is holy. I fill my lungs. -- Emma-Jane Peterson writes for magazines in the US and the UK, where she lives. Her poems are published in BoomerLitMag, The Clayjar Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Metphrastics, Penstricken, Black Nore Review, Prosectrics and Pure in Heart, among others. She is the co-author of a book of children’s Bible stories (Parragon). |