Poetry
God of Elijah, Amos, Ruth, Isaiah, Deborah...
God of Mary, John the Baptizer, Peter, Paul, Philemon and Onesimus...
She consoles me as I meditate
before Mass—Julian of Norwich,
that is, who says, “We are clothed,
wrapped in the goodness of God.”
And she consoles me after Mass
when I drive home to the friary and
pass two prostitutes who are sitting
on folding chairs next to the curb
helping each other with makeup.
Praise God for all things green
Lime jello, blades of grass, emeralds
Chameleons, the neon river frog
Heavy papayas begging to be picked
I expect the whitest dove,
purity as the Spirit breaks apart
firm blue of our ceilinged sky,
a tapered shape, an elegance.
But Picasso was right.
July 4 weekend! Now this is a holiday! We won't have another one until Labor Day, but that doesn't even matter right now. What matters is that this is the last day of a glorious three days of blessed interruption. Thank goodness for all such favors.
I [...]
The dramatic rise in world food prices has pushed millions into poverty. Here's a look at 10 factors--from agrofuel production to rising meat and dairy consumption--that have contributed to this preventable crisis.
When a Eucharist of Humility is Rejected
by Lisa Samson
A dead cold body hung on a tree.
I came to feast; I [...]
Confess to ignorance
I do not know you, although
I have loved you twenty years
The lifting of your lashes
Like the iris
in the side yard,
I have stopped blooming.
Dig me up, O Spirit,
and split me; where I have grown
calloused, break me open;
I cannot tell you why
I taste death;
the cupboards
are reasonably
arranged,
the windows clean as rain.
Before he was killed in World War I—tragically, just days before the Armistice—the poet Wilfred Owen wrote these words as preface to the book he never got to hold in his hands: “
while climbing towards
phantasmal blue
has broken—
we lie on concrete,
begging with a
shattered golden bowl.
My breath pluming white into December
could, to God, be incense rising out
of the puffing thurible of my body.
Up here, it’s impossible to tell for the fog
From far-out depths they come,
swell swelling swell,
'til cresting they salute the sky
and tumble towards sand that waits immemorially
to receive them.
Summer u
- noticing the migrant workers—
- two to a wheelbarrow of concrete—
- mending the walls of the rich
- that exclude them
we nailed God down
He's at the back of the property
He's going nowhere, sir
His feet are stuck
to a block of wood
It's comical, sir
Common Life, Robert Cording's fifth poetry collection, is informed by religious faith and enacts it.
I went there once,
to the place you’re imagining.
It was purple, with wild geraniums
under green-bright stars.
All the constellations spelled
words, like &
After the olive groves at Samothrace and fog
which billowed up from a green sea,
the rocky sheep path and bleating ewes,
wind and sun—there w