The Result was Silence
If you have stood your watch throughout the night / To guard a clothesline of national importance / Dug foxholes only to fill them up again / And then patrolled through long days in the heat
Read MoreCategory: Poetry
That Final Trip
A friend wanted to visit the bones of her people / And give their graves some weed-killer and tending / I was deputed to follow along: / Cemeteries are dangerous places
Read MoreCelebrate All Saints Day
Come on everyone, get up and dance / God has given us a wonderful chance / Sing and shout, hip hip hooray! / It’s time to celebrate All Saints Day!
Read MoreAutumn is Life Writing its Autobiography
Autumn is not the end of summer, nor yet / Is autumn the beginning of winter; it is / Itself. Autumn is not between anything / Autumn is the culmination of seasons
Read MoreUpon Reading
At least I think I read it, did I not? / The book exists and was read, but by whom? / I’m beginning to feel that I’m the trousered ape / Who feels that a slide rule is for scratching one’s back
Read MoreThe Road, The Tao, The Way
There is of course the Road, the Tao, the Way / And traveling it is more difficult with age / Or maybe now it travels more for us / But still the Road, the Tao, the Way leads on
Read MorePsalm 102:7
I lie awake; I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop
awaiting the whisper of dawn to caress the vacant charcoal peaks, asleep.
Breakfast in Constantinople
The waitress greeted us in Saint Petersburg / We drank strong coffee in Alexandria / Our omelets were served in Cambridgeshire / As we gossiped in the narthex of Hagia Sophia
Read MoreEcology (Psalm 84)
Let my verses meander, woven around fields / of hallowed kindness, their hummed liturgies
Read MoreAn Active School Meeting in Progress
This morning I drove by my old school / A staff meeting was being committed inside / Perpetrating crimes against intelligence / “HELLO MY NAME IS” / 10,000 years of civilization?
Read MoreCurious Events
At the gas station I bought a Chinese rocket / And worried that a lottery might fall from the sky / I tucked away the ticket into my pocket / Or tucked my pocket into my ticket – but why?
Read MoreThe Passing of The Queen
Few constants obtain in our shifting world / And even those constants must leave us at last / Even as the mists of September obscure / The golden days of a summer now past
Read MoreThe Prince-Poet-Cat of Gatineau, Quebec
In an ice-cream summer in the long ago / I met a marvelous cat in Gatineau / Pushkin by name, a fastidious Russian / His shiny fur coat never needed brushin’…
Read MoreLight Raindrops Upon the Withered World
After months of dreary drought and heat / Light raindrops fall upon the withered world
Read MoreLike Candles When They Quietly Go Out
When we were young / A friend once showed me a passage in a book / In which the monks of a certain cloistered order / Were often blessed with wonderfully peaceful deaths / Like candles when they quietly go out
Read MoreThere’s an atmospheric pressure
There’s an atmospheric pressure / That’s in more than just the air / It’s a sluggish, heavy parasite / That hides behind the glare
Read MoreA Violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics
A day so hot that ordinary tasks / Exhaust the body and the soul; to grasp / The handle of a water tap wearies the mind / To grasp a simple thought eludes one’s will /
Read MoreThe Grail’s Call
I was the song of Patrick’s heart,
and what made Arthur’s quest start.
When the music of Taliesin ceased to flow,
I saw the invaders come and go.
Beowulf and the Danish Passport Officer
The clapped-out Boeing / wheezed to the gate // The ground crew jumped / name-tags rattling // And swiftly moored / the shining ocean-bird
Read MoreDo you feel the light go out?
Do you feel the light go out
Like a light bulb with a flick?
A flame extinguished at the wick?
LogoSophia Magazine 