We stream on color: blue, aquamarine, dove grey. To look straight down gives vertigo, but farther out the surface seems serene, both concentration and reflective flow. Horizons offer us expanse”confine us, also. Every wavelet, though unique, resembles all. The latitudes decline; there’s almost . . . . Continue Reading »
Outside Taos, New Mexico The topknot turned. Light struck the needled floor. The darts of sunlight found you where you lay, a target of entrancement, breathing pitch. I think of all you saw that day, but most of all I think about your face, a zone of passing weather, reading change, and being it, . . . . Continue Reading »
“People sink,” wrote Mr. Bishop; “they have no stamina left, they say ‘It is the will of God’ and die.” ” The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845“1852 , by Cecil Woodham-Smith A work such as this was never from God: poor people evicted to wander the road, or to the dark poorhouse where man . . . . Continue Reading »
The parish doorbell rings. When I descend the stair nobody is there, only a bag that sings mournfully by the door, holding some baby shoes and little Polo crews tagged at the Target store. —Timothy . . . . Continue Reading »
This wrestler isn’t ready yet for college, instead he’s shaved his head for the Marines. It isn’t that he has no taste for knowledge but hungers to divine what freedom means. A grandfather was crippled in Korea, shelled in an LSI, the Inchon landing. He’s had enough of poets’ . . . . Continue Reading »
Her parents tired of locking her up before she tired of running away. Love mocks the locksmith, and love drove her on till the convent walls closed around her strong as a castle, and poverty made her as safe as wealth makes a queen. Francis the merchant’s son should have died in the streets of . . . . Continue Reading »
Readers charged that Kathleen Graber's poetry was “slovenly” and “shapeless.” As the poetry editor of First Things, I thought I’d step in and open a wider discussion of poetry, particularly as it pertains to First Things. Continue Reading »
“Noah . . . sent forth a raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth” ”Genesis 8:6 He loosed the window latch And then he loosened me, My grim cavort The first report, Now made belatedly. From gopher wood and thatch I plied by eye and wing, The ruffled weather, . . . . Continue Reading »
I commute to work on the NYC subway system every day, a routine no longer subject to the provisions enumerated in the UN Convention Against Torture owing to a jurisdiction dispute. One of the ways the Transit Authority mollifies those of us trapped into favoring it with our custom is to post . . . . Continue Reading »
Jerusalem, fulcrum of our uplift, Is not this rough plank the Cross, laid aslant Golgotha, The lever with which the philosophers boasted They could move the world? — Amit Majmudar Photo by Stefie Zawa on Unsplash. Image . . . . Continue Reading »
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