the deepening ground

Stepping out my backdoor on a typically busy Sunday morning, I was compelled to stop and listen to the varied carols of a mid-May Western Pennsylvania morning. Rather than move forward with my task of moving the car up to the road to pick up my family and load the instruments, I simply bathed in the peace. Since then, I’ve been trying to capture that moment in the proper poetic form. I started with free verse, considered the sonnet, went to a series of haiku, and then back to free verse, only to return to the haiku for the final draft. In the same vein as Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things and Emily Dickinson’s Some keep the Sabbath going to Church, I present Backyard Communion.

Backyard Communion

by Vincent H. Anastasi 5/28/26

This morning birdsong
calls my ruffled soul to share
backyard communion.

Sparrow and goldfinch,
holy unexpected priests,
serve the elements:

the avian host
nourishes cruciform life
as stillness grows wings;

rich melodic wine
awakens deep remembrance
sung in antiphon.

Here I find true rest
perching on the slender branch
of a Sabbath morn.

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