December 2024
Bio Note: Here in New England, November through March can be tough. It's dark. It's cold. In those slow, dark hours I like to think about my childhood summers spent on a small lake in NH, with my grandparents and extended family. I like to think about how even when winter seems stagnant, there are always signs of the seasonal changes in the natural world, if you look close enough. And looking closely enough is cause for hope.
Prayer Can Be Anything
Prayer can be a pile
of roadside stones, beseeching.
The quicksand sorrow invokes.
The hemlock across the lake,
supplicant in thin-needled halo light.
It doesn’t have to be
text, wafer, or baptism,
two hands pressed, rosary clicking.
Witness silver morning light
polish the empyrean sky,
the great blue heron
keyholing the elaborate blue,
the near perfect rumor
of waning snow,
the surety of this late winter light,
however stretched and thin.
Originally published in Prayer Can Be Anything, Finishing Line Press, 2023
Everything, I Am Safe Here
On the screen porch glider after supper
luminescent lamplight flickering my shoulders
I see myself cocooned in loons’ runic calls
paper moth wings wisping screens, my grandmother
close by crosswording, her knobby fingers slipping
dictionary pages, glinting glasses orbing the light.
The moon at night is bright as an egg, the welkin sky
shimmering a sprinkle of starry salt and my father
silent, riveted steel in a paperback, tackle box
and pole stationed morning-ready, as my mother washes
dishes, all our camp plates, all our bellies full
her hands wrinkled, soapy; warm.
Originally published in Prayer Can Be Anything, Finishing Line Press, 2023
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