Poets
Emily:...Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…?
Stage Manager:...The saints and poets, maybe -- they do some.
Our Town
On days when cicadas sing
we allow dragonflies
to light atop our wheelbarrow’s load
and give them safe passage
to the garden across the field.
We observe with holy envy
a cat’s meticluous patience
to count and clean with sandy tongue
every hair on its body,
perpetually purring serene.
Like the bee we consider
the lillies of this world, but then find
the golden tattoo of angels
hidden within the folds
of the rhododendron’s spring bloom.
During our walks we sometime pause
to pray at the roadside church
of the fallen sparrow, joining
its burgeoning congregation
of gathering crows.
We know that in the beginning
and begetting of a poem
there is the eternal blink of now,
the shared creation, the new creation,
the ordinary, always the word.
And while many of us have not
been boiled, pierced, or canonized,
we have sawed our words into staves,
let our pens sweat Gethsemane ink;
and when you ask us for a fish,
we will hold the stone and give you God.
John Hopkins has been an English teacher for forty-two years. He was the New England Association of Teachers of English (NEATE) poet of the year in 2008. John’s poetry has appeared in Commonweal, Saint Anthony Messenger, The National Catholic Reporter, The Leaflet, Sr. Melannie Svoboda’s blog, “Sunflower Seeds,” The Catholic Poetry Room, Amethyst Review, and Father Timothy Joyce’s book Celtic Quest. For the past six years, John has been a Benedictine Oblate affiliated with Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, Massachusetts. He loves to read, write letters, tramp the Blue Hills, and play pickleball with Kerry, his amazing wife, and mother of their wonderful children: Kate, Danny, and Brian. In February of 2021, John’s first book of poems, Celtic Nan, was published, and in February of 2023, his second book, Make My Heart a Pomegranate was published. You can reach John at brotherjohnnyhop@gmail.com.
Amethyst Review 