Monthly Archives: October 2024

An Angel Appeared to Rilke in the Garden

Of course, the angel came to him in a garden, 
that kingdom of buzzing and chirps and chucks, 
a hotbed for the miraculous where dew 
settles on hibiscus like eye-gleams and bijoux, 
and acorns drop, sprouting a maple tree
amid the rhododendron.  

Of course, Rilke saw the angel 
where mimosa petals fall, feathery
and languorous in wind. 
There is magic in the yellow rays
of dandelions, so like children’s 
drawings of the sun and magic in the spell 
cast by honeysuckle scent. 

Of course, Rilke saw the angel come down
from plush clouds in a sky the blue
of all the rivers of Heaven, 
come down to visit him in the garden
where even the lowly snail is holy. 

 

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro has published in the New York Times (Lives). Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, her short stories and poetry have been published in The MacGuffin, Euphony, the Iowa Review, and many more. Her poetry collection, Death, Please Wait was published by Turtle Box Press in 2023. She teaches writing at UCLA Extension. http://rochellejshapiro.com @rjshapiro

The Special Scarf

Blue and black silk 
running down 
in a straight line
generous horizontal wide
space, enough to hold
each side with fingertips

Some gold fleur-de-lis
mixed into the black blue silk 
medley

I went to the exhibit that year
more than ten years ago now
wearing that scarf

Taking the edge 
the small corner
I lightly tapped and touched 
the bit of silk 

To the gold-encased rounded reliquary
housing one then another then another
tiny bits of cloth,
a strand of hair perhaps,
all enclosed 
in a worship space
very small circling halo sparkling
on the long tables with the pure white cloth
as a runner below the pieces
of the exhibit.

We all walked in a single file line
quietly
hopefully
silently

After touching the relics 
I still wore the scarf,
the blue and black and gold
hues hanging down
each side of my black sweater

I haven’t looked at it 
in a while
it is in a drawer
walnut wood drawer

Marveling silently to itself
the secrets of the saintly ones
within its gentle folds.

 Joan Lerman is a writer and musician living in Southern California.  Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Emmanuel Magazine, Academy of the Heart and Mind, 300 Days of Sun, Ionosphere, Pure Slush, Orange Juice Poetry Journal, and New Croton Review.

Starlings

We’ve only got ten minutes says my mum
and so we stride beneath the arches, cross
the echoing hush of tiled floors and pews
to see the chapterhouse. I lag behind
and spot an A board printed with the words:
The nave is a journey towards the unknowable
mystery of God.
		I hurry on
and climb the wavelike steps to the chapterhouse,
so full of light it could be made from lace.
A bearded guide recounts the Civil War,
as if he’d seen the shattered glass himself.
My brother checks his phone; we slip away.

We drive across the levels, past the tor.
An old tree sinks diagonally in a pool
and feathered reedheads blaze like sunrays
in the fading light of a winter afternoon.

At Ham Wall stewards help us tuck our cars
in line. An A board tells us Starlings declined
by sixty per cent since nineteen-ninety four.
We join the straggling groups that trudge
along the abandoned railway line, then wait
with about a hundred people in the cold.

A row of clouds above the skyline gleam
with soft pink light. The marshes feel alert
with winter, like the tone of tingsha bells
receding into stillness.

			The first birds
work their way above the sycamores.
and out across the marsh. A murmuration 
passes above us like a giant wing
thrumming steadily. There is a pause,
before a line of black descends like rope
then whips the air, merging with other shapes
that swirl above the reeds. Someone said
it wards off predators but that seems wanting
as we stand before this rush of hearts and wings
that choreographs the air with living forms.

We walk along the dyke with other groups,
strangely fulfilled. Some people wait and stare
into the dusk for one last murmuration.
My gaze is drawn by other mysteries:
the stumpy willows, the line of still dark water,
the patterns made by nettles on the path.

Rowan Middleton teaches creative writing and English literature at the University of Gloucestershire. His pamphletThe Stolen Herd is published by Yew Tree Press. https://rowanmiddleton.mystrikingly.com/

Muddy Boots


It has been a wet autumn,  mud and decaying leaves cling to my boots. 
I sniff the earthy damp, breathe deeply, know the Scyppend’s Work.

In the beginning, after the chaos, silence came cloaked in darkness.
Out of silence came Light and the Whispered Word the Scyppend Spoke. 

Among the many things the Scyppend made were seeds for trees, 
and in the seeds lay hidden embryonic leaves, to clothe the trees. 

Seasons gave them birth, green life burst out to shout the joy of all that is. 
With the turning of the green to red, to yellow, to rusty brown came rest and fall.

It has been a wet autumn, mud and decaying leaves cling to my boots. 
I see the Scyppend’s plan was all provision for our Whispered World,

small details reveal the Mystery of the Scyppend’s Love: 
mud from my boots and loamy leaves to nourish roots of trees. 

** Halig Scyppend(OE): Holy Creator, Shaper of the world
 

Susan Brice  lives in Derbyshire with her husband, Richard and her canine companion Sunny. Walking the dog and observing the work of the Creator seem to go hand in hand, Seeing nature in all its many moods and colours has inspired her to write a collection of contemplative poems entitled Brushstrokes of the Ultimate Artist (2024), available from Amazon.

Susan’s poem ‘Canvas’ and her essay, ‘No Great Busyness’ have both appeared on Amethyst Review. Her poem ‘Pause’ was included in All Shall Be Well: New Poems for Julian of Norwich. She produced a collection of short stories in 2015, Returning Back and other short stories (Amazon). In 2022 Susan collaborated with fellow poets, Viv Longley and Jane Keenan to publish the poetry anthology Daughters of Thyme (dotipress.com). Viv, Jane & Susan met through the Open University Masters Degree in Creative Writing and are currently working on a second poetry anthology, Home Thyme, which will be available in October 2024.

Sukkovid (Sukkot 2020)

God leaves us 
instructions—love one another,
celebrate and mourn together,
for when we are in fragments
in uncertain times
and in inconvenient places,
when all we can see 
are the jagged edges of a world still waiting
for redemption,
we must gaze skyward
and remember:
God’s world was left
unfinished by design.
Each fragmented soul
braided together like challah
completes another,
working in miraculous tandem.
God’s instructions, sometimes whispered,
“Keep and remember.”
Secure your hope
tightly in its hiding place,
for we celebrate
everything that grows.

Even hope.
Even you.
 

Katherine Orfinger is a writer, artist, and MFA candidate at Rosemont College. She holds a BA in English from Stetson University. Katherine’s work has appeared in Beyond Queer Words, Outrageous Fortune, You Might Need to Hear This, Touchstone, Aeolus, and others. Katherine draws inspiration from her Floridian hometown and Jewish faith. She currently resides in Pennsylvania. 

In the Glow

sunlight washes over the beige kitchen tiles 
and it is twenty years prior, mother calling out 

from the bedroom hall; i follow her voice 
to reality overgrown, where time exceeds 

the linear, as emblematic patterns rise
and dust congeals to bone. in a muddle

of probability, my vision gestures still-life
misconfigured softly cogent, where the ends

diverge and reconvene full circle. i detach
from the bend and emerge on the deck 

with a fervent understanding. an eye above
the brow ridge and a lens to ease my focus.

meet me in the glow: collect across 
the backdrop as a concept interwoven. 

on a multitude of levels i experience 
her presence, a shift in common era— 

she wanders past the garden, rustling 
in the charm of swaying leaves.

Lydia Falls resides in the woods of New York after living abroad in South Korea and Taiwan. Her poetry collection, Beneath the Heavy, was published under Merigold Independent (2021). Lydia’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Connecticut River Review, Midway Journal, Washington Square Review, Here: a poetry journal, and elsewhere. www.lydiafalls.com

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.

Grace Suffices
After an Observation by Wittgenstein

Does our weight rest on shifting ground
or hang by gold wires from heaven?
We work and sleep, a dreary round 
stumbling over shifting ground,
afraid to kick the gray walls down,
faithless to pray: may grace be given
to wrest our weight from shifting ground
and rise on gold wires toward heaven.

Herons on slick river stones
are my emblem. Unafraid of
falling or drowning, they leap into
the air and oar themselves toward home,
doing what I long to do
but lack the beating wings of love.

J.S. Absher has published two full-length books of poetry, Skating Rough Ground (Kelsay Press, 2022) and Mouth Work (St. Andrews University Press), winner of the 2015 Lena Shull Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. Absher’s poems have won prizes from BYU Studies Quarterly and Dialogue and have recently been published or accepted by The McNeese Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Tar River Review. He lives in Raleigh, NC, with his wife, Patti. (www.jsabsherpoetry.com/) 

The Twilight Language

Before the sun sets, the landscape grows dense
And darkens into ambiguity.

All objects take on a significance 
At once familiar and hard to see.

What we dismissed as nothing new or strange—
Trees, stone, moss, fences, sky, stars, grass, river—
Speak to our hearts in the twilight language.

The boundaries of our bodies quiver,
And we dissolve like raindrops in the sea.

A lightning flash illuminates the gloom
Of all our furtive, momentary dreams. 

The mudras of the pine boughs pierce the moon’s
Mandala and the mantra of the wind
Chants wordless tones that still the storm within.

Lee Evans lives in Bath, Maine in retirement from the Maryland State
Archives and the Bath YMCA. He writes poetry whenever he cannot resist
the urge to do so.

To Time

It was You, wasn’t it, on the mountain
when the wind stopped,

and my soul welled into the quiet
to roll with the peaks through the clouds?

When in the forest, I felt the earth
in my roots and the wind in my leaves?

You the tenderness in me for the finch
who no longer alights from the eave when I pass.

If all that exists matters, how does the river 
carry on with calm assurance

when most days the smallness 
of my understanding is my best hope?

I feel You unfold sometimes
like a purple flower after a rainstorm  

as the pines drip spicy gold
into beams of old sunlight.

Then I want to love my way to You
straight through this body

and this sacred ground,
like a river.

To touch petals and plant seeds,
hold hands and scatter ashes.

I don’t need to ask 
if You’ll have me.

Does the river ask the ocean
if it’s ok to come home?

Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Away (Finishing Line Press, 2023).  Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and have appeared in publications such as Blue Heron Review, EcoTheo Review, Wild Roof Journal, and others.  Find her on Instagram @jwfilbrun or visit her website: https://jennawysongfilbrun.wixsite.com/poetry.