Category Archives: poems

Psalm 100 A psalm of thanksgiving. 1 Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth!2     Worship the Lord with gladness.    Come before him, singing with joy.3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God!    He made us, and we are his.    We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving;    go into his courts with praise.    Give thanks to himContinue reading “THANKSGIVING”

“This life’s dim windows of the soul / Distorts the heavens from pole to pole / And leads you to believe a lie / When you see with, not through, the eye.” William Blake, from The Everlasting Gospel Before we put a hard stop on life to celebrate Thanksgiving with our loved ones, perhaps weContinue reading “Deception: Are You Seeing With or Through the Eye?”

A poem jumped me today in the busy thoroughfares of my daily routine. Unawares, it crept up in my soul in three exclamations: “O darkness! O deception! O death!” The antidotes followed immediately on my assailant’s heels: “Light! Truth! Life!” And the following sonnet was conceived. Like many of the Old Testament psalms, this sonnetContinue reading “The Light, The Truth, The Life”

ob•tes•ta•tion n. The act of protesting; a protesting in earnest and solemn words, as by calling God to witness; protestation. n. An earnest or pressing request; a supplication; an entreaty. Likely, obtestation isn’t in your daily vocabulary. It wasn’t in mine, until today. The word even baffles most spellcheckers. But no better word encapsulates whatContinue reading “November Obtestation”

I first encountered “The Raft of Medusa” (1818-1819) by Théodore Géricualt this past summer through Eric Bess’s article “Hope for the Impossible” from the June 8th edition of The Epoch Times (I strongly recommend the article!). I’ve revisited the painting repeatedly over the past five months, continually meditating on the faces and figures strewn aboutContinue reading “Fix Your Eyes on the Horizon”

God speaks to me through Red-tailed Hawks. I don’t really remember when it started, but I have been drawn to hawks for many years. Perhaps it was reading Robinson Jeffers’ poem Hurt Hawks under the direction of my cooperating teacher, Jack Warner. Maybe it was visiting the aviary in Pittsburgh, where my children held sticksContinue reading “To Soar on Wings Like…Red-Tailed Hawks”

“For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.” The Apostle Paul, Ephesians 2:6, New Living Translation I got out of my seat. Even after spending months meditating on these words of the Apostle Paul and finally gettingContinue reading “Please Remain Seated”

“Got a whole lotta reasons to be mad, let’s not pick one.” from “Ain’t No Man” by The Avett Brothers Today in my Creative Writing & Contemporary Literature class our discussion of Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom turned to the life lesson of forgiveness. Timely, to say the least. As I shared with myContinue reading “Choosing Forgiveness”

When it rains it pours. Those aren’t the five words I intend for you to ponder in this post, but a reflection of my current state of the union. The appliances arrive tomorrow, the HVAC company will be here as well to install the heat pumps and AC, the wood for the trim arrives onContinue reading “What Can You Do with Five Words?”

As promised, the Japanese Tanka on Silence, in honor of every awkward waiting-room-train-platform moment, and the gap between my posts, that measures the audible space between humans. Silence Vincent H. Anastasi 2015 This silence is raw,like the skinned elbow of Time,and you and I sitimmutable and awkward:two columns of decorum.