SAMPLE POEM
Note:
The Hebrew word “henaini” is used several times in the Old Testament as a response
to God’s calling. Often translated as "Here I am," it signifies complete availability and
obedience to the divine.
Note:
The Hebrew word “henaini” is used several times in the Old Testament as a response
to God’s calling. Often translated as "Here I am," it signifies complete availability and
obedience to the divine.
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Potential Spam
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It wasn’t the ringtone itself
but the way it froze the moment, how the furniture suddenly stopped spinning and the stunned room caught its breath as the cell phone screen pulsed light and dark and the words Potential Spam appeared and vanished For several rings I thought it was my father though I could not imagine him calling on a cell phone, it being nearly forty years since he died. yet when the foreign voice struggled with my name I believed my father was awaiting my response I heard his voice calling me and I could not answer henaini the response of the patriarchs my name the spark of a solar flare traveling through infinite space a photon without mass seeking my connection that I absorb this endless flow and say the words Yes, I am here Yes, I am ready what is my response to this long ago call never made that still compels me to speak against the dark energy in our streets the masked enforcement and the black hole of the waiting van where light disappears it is November and the leaves are falling falling beyond number this day, this season repeated this year evermore the leaves sinking into the earth their journey transforms them they fall and the phone is calling seeking my response |
SAMPLE PROSE
A Woman on a Train
How does it happen?
A woman walked onto the airport shuttle and sat across from me as the rumbling metal cars shunted through the underground tubes. And despite the glaring fluorescent lights and the cold robotic voice calling the stations, the woman’s skin glowed undiminished, a warm peach tone. As our eyes briefly met, the woman offered a slight Mona Lisa smile, but then a bedraggled fellow stepped between us. His bags swung loose on slipping shoulder straps when he lunged to keep his wheeled luggage from toppling. And as the shuttle train rattled on its track, he began speaking aloud, his words directed at me, but loud enough for all to hear his woeful tale of delayed flights and gate reassignments. And as the woman’s eyes caught mine again in a moment of shared compassion for the chattering, overburdened man, I saw how deeply beautiful she was, the clear, emerald green of the ocean floor in her eyes, the verdant grass waving in the spackled light of shallow tropical water, her shirt open at the throat and the deepening shadows of her neck, the coral tones of her skin and the roseate sunset clouds that hung unmoving above the turquoise horizon.
“It was no dream, I lay broad waking, “ said Thomas Wyatt five centuries earlier, as a barefoot woman slipped away in the shadows of his chamber. And Pound saw it, too, as soft glowing faces became “petals on a wet black bough” that transformed a dank metro car and black-clothed Parisian commuters into a moment of beauty and grace.
The moon reflected in the water is not the moon. The quivering shadow on the flat page of the book in your hands is not the hummingbird that hovers above and behind you. These are the quiet miracles that surround us, the daily bread that nourishes the soul, the surfaces we skim like minute water striders, our thin limbs extended, our weight dimpling the fluid surface as we drift, seeking, constantly seeking.
for Wes Zeigler, 1946-2014
A Woman on a Train
How does it happen?
A woman walked onto the airport shuttle and sat across from me as the rumbling metal cars shunted through the underground tubes. And despite the glaring fluorescent lights and the cold robotic voice calling the stations, the woman’s skin glowed undiminished, a warm peach tone. As our eyes briefly met, the woman offered a slight Mona Lisa smile, but then a bedraggled fellow stepped between us. His bags swung loose on slipping shoulder straps when he lunged to keep his wheeled luggage from toppling. And as the shuttle train rattled on its track, he began speaking aloud, his words directed at me, but loud enough for all to hear his woeful tale of delayed flights and gate reassignments. And as the woman’s eyes caught mine again in a moment of shared compassion for the chattering, overburdened man, I saw how deeply beautiful she was, the clear, emerald green of the ocean floor in her eyes, the verdant grass waving in the spackled light of shallow tropical water, her shirt open at the throat and the deepening shadows of her neck, the coral tones of her skin and the roseate sunset clouds that hung unmoving above the turquoise horizon.
“It was no dream, I lay broad waking, “ said Thomas Wyatt five centuries earlier, as a barefoot woman slipped away in the shadows of his chamber. And Pound saw it, too, as soft glowing faces became “petals on a wet black bough” that transformed a dank metro car and black-clothed Parisian commuters into a moment of beauty and grace.
The moon reflected in the water is not the moon. The quivering shadow on the flat page of the book in your hands is not the hummingbird that hovers above and behind you. These are the quiet miracles that surround us, the daily bread that nourishes the soul, the surfaces we skim like minute water striders, our thin limbs extended, our weight dimpling the fluid surface as we drift, seeking, constantly seeking.
for Wes Zeigler, 1946-2014