Deborah Bogen: Bashō
Sweet friend, hear me. There will always be trouble.
W.S. Merwin: To the New Year
our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible
Judith Sanders: First Lesson
…assess this particular pebble’s
cool weight in your palm,
the diameter of its smoothness,
the course it traveled over the seabed
Majid Naficy: Seven Sacred Songs
There is a footstep
And the light of a lantern.
I hide myself beneath an old blanket
And become filled with the aroma of wheat.
Charles Davidson: Bannocks (Loaves) of Bread
Fifty-five years ago, I spent a memorable week on the tiny island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, the site to which St. Columba came from Ireland in A.D. 563, to inaugurate the Christian mission to northern Britain.
Jena Schwartz: Day 209
God pulls into a run-down motel and pays in cash. God wears a mask and walks slowly down the hallway and the one light bulb is flickering as he turns the key in the door.
Robert Gibb: Angels in Homestead
Pale, sentinel, their stone wings
Open behind them, they stood about
As though the afterlife meant
To impress itself upon us
Stephen Muecke: What Aboriginal people know about the pathways of knowledge
What can living in one place for 60,000 years teach a people?
John Samuel Tieman: Lauds
the Templar strolled the cloister
after the dawn office
the sky was a sort of orange
like he had seen in the East