sabbaths: 1985 I - wendell berry

Not again in this flesh will I see
the old trees stand here as they did,
weighty creatures made of light, delight
of their making straight in them and well,
whatever blight our blindness was or made,
however thought or act might fail.

The burden of absence grows, and I pay
daily the grief I owe to love
for women or men, days and trees
I will not know again. Pray
for the world's light thus borne away.
Pray for the little songs that wake and move.

For comfort as these lights depart,
recall again the angels of the thicket,
columbine aerial in the whelming tangle,
song drifting down, light rain, day
returning in song, the lordly Art
piercing out its humble way.

Though blindness may yet detonate in light,
ruining all, after all the years, great right
subsumed finally in paltry wrong,
what do we know? Still
the Presence that we come into with song
is here, shaping the seasons of His wild will.

Berry, Wendell. "Sabbaths: 1985 I" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 134-135.

the liar's psalm: repentance - andrew hudgins

I repent the actual. It has never got me anywhere.
It is nothing against principalities, against powers.
My father will die and I will carry on. I dread his death

more than mine because it will come sooner - knowledge I repent. In lies
he will outlive the liar. And that's me. The lie itself
will carry on, is itself a child, a separate life, a blow

against the gods of objects. Who are not happy with me
or with their densities. They are not worth their flawed kingdoms,
And neither do I love them. They are dangerous. They are too

stupid to be insignificant, too proud of their ability
to blister my hands and make them raw. I repent letting them,
and I repent logic, which has no god: it will do

anything, it will go anywhere. Tell it your destination
and it will take you there. A taxi. This is the nature
of evidence: how could you prove the meat you ate last night

wasn't horse meat, goat flesh,
or something I had, the night before, sliced from my thighs?
Or that it was meat at all? Or that you ate? There is no

bottom to what we will believe, and no top.
So I have made this vow.
Never again will I insult you with the actual, something

that has no birthday, while lies are born
six times a second and each with a festival. They are the gifts
we give ourselves, like morphine, a change of clothes, a piece

of apple pie, a black chrysanthemum, a job - I could go on.
I am ashamed when I remember whom I have attacked
with actuality. My mother with her stinginess. My wife

with her black and purple dress - you should have seen it! -
and her infidelities. My friend who steals ashtrays. My brother's
avoirdupois. I repent that blade and I repent

my skill with it. When blessed with falsehoods, I will tell them.
When told a lie, I will believe it. I will not doubt
a word you say. Forgive me now my finger in the wound, and knuckle deep.

Hudgins, Andrew. "The Liar's Psalm: Repentance" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 166-167.

true love - kathleen norris

binds all wounds,
wounds all heels,
whatever. You can tell.
William Buckley,
Gore Vidal, Sampson
and Delilah, Paul
and the Corinthians.
You can tell.

It makes us fight
and bleed, takes us to the heights,
the deeps, where we don't
want to go. Adam and Eve. Noah
and Mrs., David,
Bathsheba, Ruth,
Naomi. You can tell.

The way light surges
out of nothing. TheMagdalene,
the gardener. God help us,
we are God's chosen now.

Norris, Kathleen. "True Love" Upholding the Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 223-224.

a third possibility - wendell berry

I fired the brush pile by the creek
and leaping gargoyles of flame
fled over it, fed on it, roaring,
and made one flame that stood
tall in its own wind, snapping off
points of itself that raved and vanished.

The creek kept coming down, filling
above the rocks, folding
over them, its blank face dividing
in gargles and going on, mum
under the ice, for the day was cold,
the wind stinging as the flame stung.

Unable to live either life, I stood
between the two, and liked them both.

Berry, Wendell. "A Third Possibility" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 198.

francis meets a leper - david citino

He heard the bell toll, erratic
in a palsied hand, and smelled
the goatish scent before he saw
the figure moving in mist on the road
to Assisi, a traveler gloved and shod,
as was the law, to hide the sores,
a man's inhumanity, missing fingers
and toes, and tried to unmask the face,
slack muscles showing nothing
but astonishment, lower lids keeping
eyes open always to our providential decay,
flash soft and thick as rotten wood.
Francis saw in bleary eyes, near to him
as his mother's as she loved him,
a brother, then someone dearer, wrapped
as he'd seen others in his father's cloth
that first had profited English shepherds
and the weavers of Ghent, a skin
bleached white as bone, a flower blazing
in snow, so close to perfection it could
only decay. Francis did the only thing
he could, sun rising high enough now
to burn away the mist. He unwrapped
the face, studying lineaments fashioned
by a master's hand, image and likeness
of the death that beautifies all living.
He closed his eyes and kissed.

Citino, David. "Francis Meets a Leper" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 367.