a poem by Ivan J. Kauffman from his collection,The Ironshop & Chartres (1982) Declaimed.That is a word seldom used these days.Once popular it has fallen into disuse in our timeswhen anger and psychology have been all the rage. And now I must ask (timidly)is it so unfashionable as to be unspeakable that one might take…
Category: Poetry
Though this page too will crumble
(Valentine card no. 35)
Someday we will have made love for the last time. Will we know this at the time as one inept and final fling?Or will cooling embers simply have turned to wisp-whipped ash?Must I name a heart suddenly failing?Or illness imposing impolitelyloss upon loss? Perhaps not. Perhaps nothing of the kind.For love once truly made –…
Sed contra (a poem)
I suppose I will always be suspect to you,heir as I am to martyred dissent,beholden to untidy reality no catechism can tame,gripped by loyalty to bishops and creedthrough a second simplicity not simple at all,a good enough Catholic at best,in a time when the “best” of so many is enemy of the good. Still, can…
“As”
A pebble in our shoes, that little word: “Forgive us our sins as …” “as we forgive those who forgive us.” As we forget? No, of course not. And yet I do remember. And remembering I hurt anew, wincing. And wincing I stumble, just a bit, just enough, to bump you, but it feels like…
“The Little Nation”
by Jessica Powers
Having recently discovered the poetry of Jessica Powers, thanks to Give Us This Day, I find this one especially delightful and apropos in these days that tempt us even more than usual to trust in violence. I guess it also provides a salutary antidote to my own somewhat gloomier poetry! The Little Nation Having no…
My Bucket List
A Maturing Zen Christian Localist Manifesto Eat a nutritious breakfast. Figure out how to use a prayer book and start saying the liturgy of hours. Find a local parish with a priest who loves and listens to the people; attend weekly. Find a local public radio station and lock it in. Marry someone who prays…
Thoughts in a season of dreary news
So is this how it ends — civilization we call it? First, a few trillion insults uncountable mounting thoughtless words, and a billion well-meaning projects each with fruits unintended unforeseen misdirected sinned and singed by one human condition now globalized across a heating planet.
For Joetta
Prose Haiku July 2007 We walk the labyrinth, my love and I. Curving around each other, almost crossing, turning away, back, parallel, apart, one mysterious destination. Labyrinthian ways run through the bed where we touch tenderly and weep bitterly. They take us to the table at the center of the maze – extend? defend? bend…