Volume 32, No. 4

Outside the glass that keeps us warm, 
the sparrows, 
most common of creatures, 
of whom the promise is made 

The night before, the earth had jolted us, 
A ripple in our sleep till Dad called it 
A quake and brought to life the massive plates
Beneath us gnashing the ages. It was 

In their projected restoration, contractors 
pulled down aging plywood, discreetly 
placed to hide remnants of the stained-glass 
window shattered in the fifties by a bevy 

Do you know this picture, asks
the magazine. Yes, I’ve seen
this man before. I’m sure 
that clean, bronze brow, those
dark eyes’ intensity surprised

You’d been the one taken out and talked to during stories of Jesus.
On the scuffed pew you stuffed the blessed bread 
in your mouth and blew it out, laughing. 
So when they found you in blood at the foot of the stairs,

Back from a walk along the Big Wood River in early May 

I am the river alive with spring run-off 
one moment rushing to be where the calling calls, 
the next a pool reflecting or an eddy at play.

Behind the weathered barn, I crouch 
among burlap bags full of this year’s 
seed. These kernels promise before 
they prove, and I have no choice 

From under ground 
you can hear them stomp, 
a chaotic cacophony 
amplified by mud and bone, 

In the Sacred Grove 
near Palmyra, New York, 
there’s hardly a tree 
old enough to have been