(2017, Virginia)
On the day that hate rode into town /
We visited our neighbor in her new home /
She is over 90 years old
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Thirteen ways of looking at the garden
After the city, the garden /
is quiet, the leaves green /
enough to absorb every cry. -
Of death and pascha
WHAT PERSISTS /
there is the void /
there is the heavy immovable stone . . . -
Resurrection among the ruins
Can there be resurrection /
among the ruins? /Dare we imagine new life /
rising from these streets of death? -
Blue Psalter Hymnal #379: Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow
Children crack palm nuts milked of fats, / stripped of orange. They smack / nuts on rocks, split out the kernel of ndika . . .
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The ruined career
I believe in the great discovery.I believe in the man who made the discovery.I believe in the fear of the manwho made the discovery . . . This is the beginning of the poem “Discovery” by the Nobel laureate, Polish poet Wisława Szymborska (pronounced ShimBORska). It was first published in a 1972 collection. Poland was…
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Three hundred years after a forest burns,
it grows back fully / Six days after the flames / black bears return for berries. / The restoration / of the world leaks /through a broken dam
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‘I like your scarf’
Says the mom, picking her kid up from / daycare / “I like your scarf” / Says the teenager in Dundas Square / “I like your scarf” / Says the woman in the grocery store as I reach for the eggs / We all smile gently as we gesture / At our own chests, our own hearts
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Arts & Culture | Food | Poetry
Cabbages is beautiful
In cabbage, each leaf laid /
so closely against another, /
creation is unfurling . . . -
It’s like forgiveness
The long stroke of raven’s oar /
dips into deep sky and cuts across /
the fast-moving shadow of a turkey vulture.
