Monthly Archives: December 2024

108  (New Year's Prayer)

“like prayers divine, 
I must each day say o’er the very same; 
Counting no old thing old, thou mine”  
Sonnet 108 ~ William Shakespeare 
 
Below the weft 
of seed syllable shaped breaths,
one hundred and eight uncleaned lotus seeds 
of the rabbit eared mala
skim seamlessly across the skin of space,
like one hundred and eight moons 
to the moon, or suns 
to the sun;
birds of dark passage 
counted up towards a crown of untold petals. 

In Japan, Zen monks ring in the new year 
one hundred and eight times. 
I pray my first foot will be decorated 
one hundred and eight auspicious ways,
and a mala is left counting its corolla.

Christopher Martin is a Buddhist poet living by the Mouth of the Tyne on the North East coast of England. He is widely published in various publications, both in print and online. His debut collection has recently been published by  @theblackcatpoetrypress.

Nightfall on Summit Lake

That impalpable time 
before darkness settles on the horizon 
and the glare on the surface of the water 
softens to the hue of a graying sky, 

the only sound you might hear is the call 
of a mourning dove or the flop of a walleye.
That’s when you reel in your line and watch 
nightfall turn the tree line to silhouettes 

and in the shallows of the cove stumps rise 
from beneath the surface like markers. 
Fireflies swarm like transitory dreams. 
Then silence takes hold, vast and glorious.

You clutch the gunnel, take a long thin breath,
hungering for it to last.

James Green is a retired university professor and administrator.  He has published six chapbooks of poetry and individual poems have appeared in literary journals in Ireland, the UK, and the USA. His previous works have been nominated for a Puschcart Prize, “Best of the Net” and the Modern Language Association Conference on Christianity Book of the Year; and, his chapbook titled Long Journey Home: Poems on Classical Myths won the Charles Dickson Prize sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society. His website can be found at http://www.jamesgreenpoetry.net.

Reading the Rain

I’m reading the rain
falling on the pond
this morning
a kind of braille
I only understand
by feeling my way
through the dark

 
A Gathering

Etched on the scrolls of memory
By the muse recalled as a gathering
Of thought sent seemingly through
the dark to arrive here in a noticeable way 

 
The Heart

Is the stargazer's delight
an endless cave of aboriginal
paintings older than the universe

 

Gerry Grubbs has had poems appear in the Painted Bride Quarterly, Journal Of Expressive Writing and others. His most recent book is Learning A New Way To Listen, from Dos Madre Press.

Thinking of St Aebbe at a Bernat Klein design workshop

‘The designer should be a visionary and a dreamer.’ Bernat Klein, Design Matters


Klein’s old ways harmonise with nature 
a seasonal blend of hues, in planes of colour
We discern through visual inspiration,
sea thrift, feather from St Abb’s Head.
The prayer is in the noticing:
think of the color purple. 
What can we learn from lilies and birds?
Watch as day's eyes open to the sun,
birds sing, preen, feed.
Rhythms both seen and heard. 

Design shows care for individuals
affirm Klein, the Aesthetic
and Fibonacci Principles.
With lush Briar, Holly, Maple, Mace
tweeds of slub twined with ribbon of velvet,
beauty confers dignity. Perhaps also truth?
Sustainable wool, bamboo,
hemp, linen, mohair. Nuns chant
'The earth is the Lord's
and everything in her.'             

Resilience builds through daily rhythm,
pink thrift thrives in salt sea spray, 
and very dry summer conditions.
Prayer work play. Prayer work play.
In warps and wefts of everyday
repetition is the Designer’s friend
pink thrift, gull from St Abb's Head
dark green, grey-cream, sage, cerise
dark green, grey-cream, sage, cerise
Prayer work play. Repeat, repeat.
                                                           
With care to leave blank margins
find a natural line, play
and work with what feels right
Cut upwards, disrupt, cut through the pattern repeat,
experiment. Tape end to end, reconfigure
now blank space is ripe to create in.
Magma rises, makes new crust at plate margins,
as in the silence of negative space
old stories weave new connections.     
Sublimation makes for strong imprints.

Inspired while teaching Christian attitudes to animals and the environment in Religious Studies, Barbara Usher now cares for retired ewes who bring their lambs at foot, and ex-commercial hens on her 8 acre animal sanctuary, Noah’s Arcs. Her poetry has been published in Borderlands: an Anthology, Amethyst Review, Dreich, Green Ink Poetry, Last Leaves, Last Stanza, Liennekjournal, and in the Amethyst Press anthology Thin Places & Sacred Spaces. Her work appeared on the Resilience soundscape 2022 for Live Borders, with background accompaniment of her late pigs. She writes on Celtic saints, farmed animals, and her local area.

Scales

The leaves caress the waterfall.
The window of the shed is open.
I can hear the notes of the piano
dancing on the surface of the current.

All afternoon I wandered the property,
peeling my life from its circumstances
like an apple from its skin. 
Now I sit and listen. God gives us days

to practice the rhythm of eternity.
Down along the edge of the wood,
dark honeycomb whose nectar is humidity,
the wind passes over pages of hydrangeas

sewn into a thin volume of poems.
Like the green of the leaves turning fiery colors
to be extinguished by the winter rains
the river will smoke with its telling,

I will be saying goodbye for the rest of my life.
Your hands move up and down the scales.
The river is carried on the back of a fish
or crawls on its knees to the sea.

Michael Centore is the editor of Today’s American Catholic, a journal of inquiry, reflection, and opinion based in the US. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the National Catholic Reporter, Religious Socialism, the Pentecost Vigil Project, and other publications.

E = MC2

In the beginning was the Word
and Genesis was a song
the sound of matter transforming

I learned that the language of the universe
is mathematics
ratios and formulas
a great puzzle to be deciphered

In harmonic analysis 
of the periodic table of elements
atomic weights obey the Octave Law
molecules arranged like musical notes 
ascending
as electrons dance between their shells
Creating    Destroying    Remaking

God’s voice
is in the divine numbers 
the sacred sound
of waves 
of energy 
light 
and matter 
transforming


Deborah Bailey has been writing poetry since she was a teenager. She recently retired after 40 years in social services and 30 years as a master’s level social worker. She has finally mustered courage to begin submitting recent work for publication, hoping others will enjoy her imagery.

The First Frost

The first frost
Comes out like frozen razors,
A sheet of silver paper
Thrown up by the fretting earth.

I walk barefoot expecting a
Million lacerations but only
Receive a thank-you note
For my courage.

The pregnant heat of my feet
Makes tracks with no cadence or
Design.  Those mottled impressions
Take their deformities to a weathered bench.

I sit waiting for your rebuke,
No tender remonstrations but 
A firm voice, without suggestions.
A bare minimum of advice:

Stay seated, cease your travels
Until the voice you hear
Names the son above all sons
And clears away desire’s debris.

Wayne Bornholdt is a retired bookseller who specialized in academic works in religious studies and theology. He holds degrees in philosophy and theology. He lives with his wife and three dogs in West Michigan where he works on his tennis game and writing.

Christingle

Christingle: an orange; 
a yellow flame above a slim white candle;
a scrap of tin foil from the kitchen drawer. 
It is sufficient. 

Liz Kendall works as a Shiatsu and massage practitioner and Tai Chi Qigong teacher. Her poetry has been published by Candlestick Press, The Hedgehog Poetry Press, and Mslexia. Liz’s book Meet Us and Eat Us: Food plants from around the world is co-authored with an artist and ethnobotanist. It explores biodiversity through poetry, prose, and fine art photography. Her website is https://theedgeofthewoods.uk and she is on Twitter/X and Facebook @rowansarered, and on Instagram @meetusandeatus.

Rahab

                Joshua 2

I was a woman of stone and stars
And ran an inn on Jericho's outer wall
Satisfying my lodgers' uncaring desires.
My arms were always open.

When Joshua's spies snuck in,
I hid them behind stacks of flowering
Flax, yellow stars on my roof. 
Three days later, I lowered them

To the street below with a scarlet cord.
Bleeding from my window, a radiant
Umbilical cord for my holy offspring
Stretching down to Boas and David

And then to the baby swaddled
In the walled town of Bethlehem, a star
Of wonder above his stone manger.

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published over 40 books, including twelve collections  of poetry and chapbooks. Among his most recent titles are Emmett Till in Different States (Third World Press, 2015), Reaching Forever (Poiema Series, Cascade Books, 2019), Delta Tears (Main Street Rag, 2020), Americorona: Poems about the Pandemic (Wipf and Stock, 2021) and Evangeliaries: Poems (Angelico, 2024). He also has poems included in Christian Century’s Taking Root in the Heart (Paraclete, 2023).

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writings have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015 entitled she: robed and wordless and her second, Writing the Stars, 2024. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. James Lee III composed “Chavah’s Daughters Speak” for a concert held on May 11, 2021, at 92Y in New York City for five poems from her book. Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023, sponsored by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society.