Tag: poetry

What Is Lost

February 13th, 2026

Photo by Sebbi Strauch

It is not lost on me

That I was sent away during holy times

First, when we anticipated hope and light

Born into the darkness

Cast out among celebrations

Of joy and peace and love.

Is it not lost on me

That I returned to find nothing but callousness

A strangeness in the air that lacked

The promise of the Christ.

For a second time I was sent away as we

Collectively contemplated

Death.

Twice over wandering in the wilderness

Looking for a well

Told that banishment would be good for me

As the knife of betrayal was still buried in my back

Commiserating with the psalmist

And the man who cried from the cross

Eloi Eloi, lema sabachthani?

But what is lost on me

Is how the gospel has become

So malformed as to claim

Punishment is grace and

Exile is an attempt to reconcile.

You lost me on that one.
When the Shepherd is a Wolf

February 6th, 2026

Photo by Ariana Prestes

When the shepherd is a wolf

The sheep will never be at ease.

It won’t matter how he tries to hide

To comfort, to appease.

The sheep might stop their stamping

Cease their fretting and their cries

They might become accustomed

To his teeth and yellow eyes

But the sheep will never trust him

Never give him true respect

Never run towards him for safety

Or for wisdom, to reflect.

Though he tuck his tail and ears

Though he file down his claws

The sheep will always know that they

Could end up in his maw.

So the sheep will be polite

They’ll always get in line

But they’ll watch their back and whisper

And they’ll wait, and bide their time.

For sheep can tell who loves them

And who is there for his own greed

And when the shepherd is a wolf

The sheep will know they’re feed.
The Ashes

January 23rd, 2026

Photo by Yana Druzhinina

Watching what was left of you

Get dumped out onto the icy stones

Your bits of bone among the dust

As the ash that once was your smile

Piled in the place where they upended the urn

Your wife in too-slick shoes

For walking on rocks

Held steady by a man who was mostly a stranger

I had to turn my eyes away

For just a moment

Because it seemed cruel to leave you

Heaped like a dune in the garden

Instead of throwing you into the wind

And letting it carry you onward

Ever upward

Free.
Piercing

January 16th, 2026

Photo by Sarah Orr Aten

When they pierce you, the needle goes in straight

That’s why it hurts when you twist a corkscrew through the hole

Even after you’ve healed.

Amazing how far your scars can stretch

When tested by a thicker bar

How your body will adapt and form

A brand new shape for your updated adornment.

Harder though is how the heart heals

How a thickened skin can circle the trust you once had

And make your empathy less pliable

Less available

Less wide.

There’s no twisting a corkscrew through a heart piercing

The wound itself is enough to kill.

One must sit, still and groaning

While others watch over the process

Offering tenderness and gentle silence

Until the hard scab falls off on its own.
I Don’t Take My Kids to Church

January 9th, 2026

Photo courtesy of WordPress Free Library

I don’t take my kids to church
It’s not a place I want to be
For ministers protect themselves
And not once protected me.

I don’t take my kids to church
It’s filled with gossip and with lies
And loose-lipped friends who mean well
But end up being spies.

I don’t take my kids to church
I’d rather teach them to be good
To love mercy, peace and justice
As God tells us that we should.

I don’t take my kids to church
For they were taught by watching, stunned,
That when you dare defend yourself
You are punished and are shunned.

I’d rather that my kids find God
In grass and dirt and tree
Than in pew and hymn and pulpit
And be wounded, just like me.
The Burning Bridge

January 2nd, 2026

Photo by Raquel Raclette

I have tried to avoid it

The burning bridge at which I stand

Which you continued to ignite

Without a thought or plan

What you would do when the fire

Started spreading through the reeds

How the flames might consume you

As your callous, careless deeds

Have consumed my thoughts for ages

At your words, ill, pale with spite

How your arrogance and ignorance

Have dismissed my life outright.

But how the stones cry out!

How the earth itself is weeping

While you pretend there is no fire

Near the bed where you are sleeping.

A fire which I grow weary

Of containing at the bridge

Which now I’ll let grow wild

Consuming bank and field and ridge.

A cleansing, healing fire

That will leave your house in dust

Expose your treasures to the rain

Leave your tools to rot and rust.

And when the bridge is cinders

When you can’t hide beneath your hatch

Think of how your pride destroyed you.

It wasn’t I who lit the match.
Gramma Garlets

December 19th, 2025

This photograph is one of many in my personal archive of family portraits.

Who were you, Gramma Garlets

Before the photographs were packed away

Stored for safe keeping in a banker box

Which smells as old as what it holds

When I lift to lid, to wonder?

What stories would you tell me

If you were here with me

Instead of these leftovers

Papers and folios and snapshots

Of you holding babies I can’t identify

Your portrait tucked at the bottom of the stack

Before my grandfather, and the First World War?

What did you wear on an ordinary day

And did you spend your time wondering

About your own grandmother, 5 generations back

Who would have been painted, had she sat for a portrait

Rather than have her likeness captured on paper

By light?

This is all I have left of you

These photos and this question,

Who were you, Gramma Garlets?
Soft

November 28th, 2025

Photo by Annie Spratt

How does one remain soft when

Out of necessity

She has had to yell into the face

Of a fellow pilgrim on the journey

“To hell with you”

While they both continue to walk

Towards the same Heaven?

How does she not let the heart-hardening of Pharaoh

Become her bread and butter

Drinking the gall of that bitter elixir

Because it was the only sustenance left out for her

As she made her way towards God?

And how does she walk beside the ones

Who chose violence or ignorance or apathy

When she was crying out for a friend

To pull her from the pit?

What can she even say to them,

Those who left her behind and thought it was

The right choice

Except

“To hell with you too”

As she treads slowly up the hill

Looking, ever looking

For redemption

And the path to become soft again.
Visitation

October 31st, 2025

Photo by Sarah Orr Aten

I like to think that he is you

Though his red crest is unlike your gray curls

And his feathered wing is not like your fragile hands

But he sings and chirps and flutters as he feeds

And it makes me think of you laughing

While we do nothing, waiting for supper

For the night to creep over the house

Like the cat I knew would come out of hiding

Once I had quieted down for bed.

Yes, I do like to think this handsome bird is you

Checking up on me all these years later.

That’s why he’s always here

Because he isn’t just an ordinary bird

He is a visitor who loves me.

Or at least

He is a visitor who reminds me

How much love I still have to give you.
We Are Not Evolved for Modern Life

October 10th, 2025

Photo by Jeremy Perkins

We’re not evolved for modern life

Our genes aren’t coded

To call to replace our gas meters,

Investigate how a payment was made for you

At the doctor’s office or

For computerized cars and refrigerators that connect to wifi.

No. We’re evolved for wandering across the steppe,

Tending crops which we planted

In the loam deposited by the annual flood,

Slowing when the sun disappears,

Telling stories by orange firelight,

For superstition, for surviving the winter.

We’re not evolved for circuitry

Constant connectivity

Institutions, organizations, governments.

We’re evolved for wonder and for mystery

For practicing the kind of religion

That springs from inside you when you hold a new baby,

Eat freshly baked bread, or a delicious piece of cake,

Lay a flower on a grave, or put your pet to sleep or

Look up at the stars and think

I am small and it is wonderful.