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      GRIEF Grief hollows    excavates with sparking picks     and groans of spent marl turned    tear-made mud  heaped heavy     on blistering spades      – 3/24/19

‘Cross windy-wicked, slate-sewn fields the Gaelic minstrel plies   fingers blistering on the lyre his cry soars high and clear   remembering the Wanderer’s oath, missing most, the sea. – tjk  

What are you doing tomorrow? This tailwind turning the page of each done day to the ribboned gift of the next tomorrow may not come, we know, but do not know as they do the old, the ill, those struck still, whose pillows hold, not promise but guarantee, what hope tucks them in when, should … More WHAT ARE YOU DOING TOMORROW?

VOCATION Deep calls out to Deep, here to there, the center, everywhere a wire strung thrumming above thundering cataracts heart grown pure groaning trembles on Spirit-wings soaring panting halted now discovering this yearning behold, the echo of its True Love, calling – 7/25/17

ROSARY (For Mom) In the stillness between beads and breaths you, at times, may catch the distant groans the yearning sighs of the unseen yoked in solitude gently drawn through index and thumb the next becomes the present bead soul-bearing seed of voices dropped deep within the soil’s dark night to open inside-out climb then … More Rosary

Yesterday’s white mantel is today slush shackling the dusk-hour flow Six days till Christmas things to do no time for this or to see what’s out the window to the left Traffic halts abruptly in both directions Whatever the cause it won’t do, and presently comes into view A trio of geese waddling and wide … More Urgency Interrupted

“What a difference a day makes.” That was certainly the case when, in roughly twenty-four hours, Kiev went from flashpoint for civil war to a field in which the seed of freedom had a chance, finally, to take root. Changes are following rapidly — most conspicuously, in Crimea. And while some are perilous, all are … More Ukraine in the Tomb

Politics aside, it’s hard to deny that the images beamed to the world from the opening of the Sochi Games were anything short of stunning. Of course, removing the Olympics from political context is a challenge steeper than any we’ll see in its events. And in the case of Sochi, the context is limned with … More Crucifixion in Kiev

  Jim was a Jesuit. It’s how we met: he a new, puzzle of a priest; I, a pip-squeaking wince of a novice. It was August 1978, and I declare with utter gratitude that from then on, ours experienced none of the lapses long-lived relationships often do. Jim was a Jesuit, which is to say, … More Jim Was a Jesuit

A few nights ago, I woke with an unpleasant start, confused by unusual physical discomfort, and a surge of panic that the hour you know not”was upon me. “Is this what Dad experienced,” I wondered, “as he began to slip irretrievably into it ?” The prospect that my father knew what was happening yet was … More The Death of Death’s Long Life