St. John of the Cross: Dark Night of the Soul (English and Spanish)
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me
Hildegard von Bingen: Vision 7, The Devil
Then I saw a burning light, as large and as high as a mountain, divided at its summit as if into many tongues.
Abe Louise Young: Calling from the Homeless Camp
On Tenderness, Expulsion and Mutual Aid
Dawn Potter: Home Burial
I pretend I am living in a faraway
city, somewhere in Europe, where doves
coo in the bell towers and a woman in
heels click-clicks over the cobblestones,
walking, walking late into the night.
José A. Alcántara: Eclipse
Some will be thrilled at your steady undoing,
others, bored, wishing the spectacle over,
still others will be distracted by the stars
blazing past you. But yours will be no quick plummet.
Robert Cording | Notes: August, 2020, Whidbey Island
Some days all of America—the whole messy idea of it—
seems to be right here, the military meeting
the idyllic so casually.
Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Sean Sexton: Lightening
Did I learn the wrong word or is this world indeed lessening
whether gradually or at once, and another lovely pine
of my familiar horizon assumed the sorrel countenance
of demise
Martin Luther King: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Kathryn Levy: Tomorrow & The Subject of Flowers
And the children who run
from hiding place to
hiding place? Let them
cover their eyes and
count out their seconds,
as the wagon man watches
Therese L. Broderick: Beautiful Uses | The Compassion of James Crews
This book’s enduring beauty and daily usefulness can cradle and help to heal our broken hearts.
Stephen Haven: Roadside Portals
I see roadside altars that open portals.
I see drivers slipping by those mounds
of cardboard signs and paper flowers
Edna St. Vincent Millay: “And you as well must die” (Sonnet 19)
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Elizabeth Jacobson: Love, I Am
what am I
to myself:
two feet on
some land
when upright
