Butterfly Effect The little girl has caught the yellow swallowtail She holds it prisoner in a jar – Release it, child, release it soon Quickly, quickly It is the butterfly effect’s Epitome For when the wings have fluttered once The tides commence And when the wings have fluttered twice The ocean’s flood tide will return […]
Combat Boots I fight the flesh. The world’s no test. When I fight the devil I’m at my best. But combat boots, Size 8 for me, I wear when I fight the Ph. D. Hilary McRee Flanery
One Small Room Is the past a house with doors and windows, What is to come a citadel one blind entrance? There is no past or future There is a room with open windows The wind blows through from one side to the other Curtains billow out like banners Shadows move too quickly to be […]
Mark Five: Red Letter Edition Come out, come out wherever you are! What is your name? Go home to your friends and tell them the things – the merciful things – the Lord has done. Who touched My clothes? You’ve touched the Son! Now go, touched in peace. You have been healed. You have been […]
As Sure as the Moon and the Sun I’ve written no poem so far While I wait for the words to be blessed, In a little green porcelain jar The wrens have returned to their nest It swings from a beam of the porch Glazed with the O of a gate, In the O is […]
The Pearl of York St. Margaret Clitherow A girl, a lady, Wife, a mother, From church of England She saw the other. The other, where, Her church came from. The other, where, The fruit was plumb. The other, where, Her church beat down, And looted jewels For earthly crown. And watching, she, Was irritated, And […]
The Great and Splendid Hunched on the limb of a young green tree A red-tailed hawk in a crowd of yelling jays Hemmed by limbs and leaves Close confined, a cage of wings and screams They hit the broad brown wings and swoop away Crouches, helpless to strike back, to apprehend The midgets who assail […]
One by One… Go deeper Where rock is set aflame Making what is cold Molten lava Spewed forth To set ablaze all on the path- I’ve known them both Candle flames and roaring stars (One by one) Doused No longer dare I flicker idly No longer Michele Marie
Freak When dogs grow antlers, hooves, And stags loll out their tongues, When from the throats of wolves A sparrow’s song is sung When from the backs of whales The manes of lions spring, When lizards shake their tails Like puppies beckoning No reason makes a change Except for nature’s play, The commons of the […]
Vortimer Bury me at Richborough, for then Barbarians will not through here raid Britain Though through other ports they may attack, By my body’s lying here they will hold back He was a warrior of Christ, this Vortimer, Though pagan were the Saxons off the Saxon shore, Flesh of mortal weakness now and in the […]
Having a Word with Judah Someone must have told you stories of your great- grandfather, Abram, and your great-grandmother, Sarai – how they had domestic troubles, struggling to amend the word they’d heard. Surely someone called them foolish to be so old and childless yet still plotting, childlike toward a milk-and-honey life. Someone must have […]
Untold The shrilling of the wren so loud Surrounded by a hollow bird, A nest in which a voice resides, A life that has a life inside So the spirit in the flesh A hollow with a living guest, Spirit hatches, fledges, flies, May be of no or any size As we are small the […]
Never can fast be the same as slow, Nor is an ebb tide at all like flow. Though both of these pairs come from ….motion, Although each might share common ocean. Freedom likewise has opposing poles, One dreadful with bergs and many shoals. Liberty, though, is hopeful and clear, And, under God, gives our souls […]
Love as Mongrel We will be forgotten Here and on this world As worlds themselves go rotten Dispersed into the void Paul the last disciple Said wisdom, strength of will Loveless be and futile As empty broken shells But even love as mongrel Deformed with grief and rage And savaged by the devil Will long […]
Speaking Other Language What do we know of the cool brook’s rising slowly from its rock-source: trickling, winding, fading among the lilied grasses then suddenly splitting the tomb of another field where cows laze in live-oak shade, waiting good-naturedly for just such a miracle to happen? Mary Harwell Sayler
Chance We can’t go on the way we go, In moving darkness ruin grows, Living in my eighth decade I see the bedlam we have made What’s to stop the monstrous form That we have made, already born Engendered of a crippled lust Conceived within time’s uterus Matured become the king or queen Or both, […]
Your Hand I’d Kiss Your hand, I’d kiss But not for this, The mundane games Men play. Your hand, I’d kiss For doing this, Absolve my sins Away. Your hand, I’d kiss But not for this, That any man Can do. Your hand, I’d kiss, For doing this God’s strong, His choice, the few. Your […]
Must Wander Go up or down, whatever scale you see, A caterpillar crawling on a tree, A vapor-bloated cloud that’s sailing east, A beetle to a dead mole for a feast All in motion, tell, what is the soul, Cloud or caterpillar or a mole? Does it move or does it rest the same, Vapor […]
Haiku Wrought From Rubble Purified by fire, beaten into submission, shaped for service: Gold! Mary Harwell Sayler
Weapon The cross is deep, a dagger, So firmly fixed is evil, Who can pull it out, extract This weapon of the devil? A relic in no reliquary, Heirloom of the race, It stands upright as humans do But has no human face And what became of Jesus’ cross When Christ was taken down? It […]
Swift As A Star Flicker Prayer, it does ascend Up from the mind into the air Through the highest cumulus In an orange dusky sky And higher still, like a tailed comet Out of earth’s realm of spiraling starlights And into the black of space, And higher still Past a rare jeweled galaxy With stars […]
Late The Holy Father is expected But has not by this time arrived To celebrate a Mass outdoors – A stadium is set aside But not too large, a pocket field That holds a smallish crowd of faithful, Even so, the seats not filled Empty ones for late arrivals Scattered in the sloping grandstand And […]
The Funeral begins with the birth-date of skin, color, gender, bruising caused by delivery into your particular place or family. No one knows what you now feel. No relative totally relates. No medical force utterly understands the length of your life, your foot, your hand, or other wonderments with […]
Columba in the Church Alone Columba in the church alone So long ago on Iouan island Light streamed through the shuttered windows Through the seams of doors it flowed Did he not converse with angels? Fantasy and myth and legend Say the ones whose shutters close Whose doors of love are firmly fastened Whose house […]
