A Psalm for Rescue From my Sin

Help me O Lord, for my soul shrinks away, my flesh is consumed with groaning. My body groans as an old man, my spirt, like a grieving mother. For round and round my thoughts have gone and never find a rock on which to rest, leaves that float, then dip and never touch the […]

God of Beyond

In wisdom dwelling, high holy mountain: pure, pure, none brighter than He. High in His praise, the God of Forever. Now in His glory, forever will be. – In lovingkindness, kinder than rainfall. Clean, clean, none gracious as He. Kind in forgiveness. The God of the downcast, Here in His presence, His mercy we see. […]

To Padre, My Guardian Angel

Dear Padre, Where have you been, my friend? Ever since the day your email popped up in my folder, I have relied on the wisdom of your sage counsel. I knew you were truly an angel from the first. There was a picture after all: a gray-haired man with a beard. I knew you were […]

Autumn Equinox

Black crow sitting on the ghost branch caws, white horse running up the hill. Half-baked pumpkin in the window sill, old brown buggy in the stalls. – Corn silk spotted in the sun’s last gleam, Wolf dog lying on the floor. Rusty shovel by the screened in door grey paint dying like a dream. – […]

Freedom’s Sacrifice

They went to war to battle for the cause, and gave up life and fortune for their own. They lived at war. They died and slept their sleep enclosed in soil hardened like resolve. – And yet they never rushed into the fray where soldiers died while bullets reigned around. They never stormed a cliff […]

A Lowcountry Occasion

Pink tree painted like a splash against the sky, grey cloud glowring overhead. Sad stream teardrops striking from the sky green washed willow by the pond. – Fiddlers scatter in the skittle of the rain tall grass bowing to the breeze. Marsh walk lifted like a piece of wooden foam billion pinpricks pattering. – Lamplight […]

On Things Above

I hang my every hope upon the Lord and swing out on the promise of His name; the God who saves His people from their sins extending grace and justice just the same. – CHORUS Lord who do I desire on earth but You? And who in heaven, Lord, apart from You? Nor height nor […]

Sonnet VIII

I did not know that perfect love was mine, wrapped up in swaddling clothes before my birth and opened there upon the cross—the sign that grants my meager soul its worth. More thrilling than an ice-cold breeze on hot and humid days, the moment when I knew that I had been the object of His […]

A Time to Mourn

When heaven takes a soul from us and leaves the body cold and still, the balm of truth may calm the mind, but cannot cure the heart of pain for at the tomb of Lazarus where he would rise, creation bowed to Providence, but Jesus wept.

Happy

If the earth could spell tonight, I know the word that she would write for I have felt it in the wind— the dampness staying like a friend. In lonely highways—dark and stilled, spread out like pages to be filled— the little frogs come hopping through. I think that they can feel it too— the […]