The Visitor

Love stood knocking at the door and when I offered silence he waited, patient, on the stoop and called my name. – Each sally I would feign to make to leave the door and quiet the tiny blurt of conscience-prod— I saw he watched the frame. – I turned from him to read the world […]

Blueprint for Mercy

He kneels before me both arms wide begging for clemency again— like he didn’t know the pay plan. – eyes trained on me, as if I’m tied to some special code of kindness, overriding sense with blindness, – as if some mercy should divide him from his failures, change his ways, forgive his debts for […]

I Reach for Grace

I reach for grace like stretching for a cup of water in the heat that seems too far away. – My fingers seem at best to scratch the back of worn and weathered hands that hold the drink I crave – My mind. Practical. like sluffing off a test I know I cannot ace. Should […]

Gossip

Once I saw a picture of a man down, his blood pooling on the street while the swarming EMTs took forks and knives to him instead of gauze, butchering a life they could have saved— Oh God, forgive me . . . it was a mirror.

Resurrection

Darkness falls, The cloak of evil claiming all the world. The One to save us from our sins, Our highest hope’s become our deepest loss. We put our one Light out upon a cross, And all is darkness now. ___ Cold and dark The death-cave where we lay our only Light, Nothing but a shadow […]

A Pantoum

I thought that I was finished—I was wrong. A Headache night, a little sleep, a hurried day. Classes never ended, a week that lasted long— Waiting eagerly to eat and drink and play. A headache night, a little sleep, a hurried day Became my accepted practice all the time. Waiting eagerly to eat and drink […]

melenoria

forgiveness