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Category Archives: poetry
Signs of the times
It’s been a long week. It has left me ping-ponging between anger at the challenges young people face that we had never heard of growing up, and astonishment at how some of them respond with strength, dignity, friendship and love. … Continue reading
Posted in current events, poetry
Tagged parenting, school threats, sexting, technology, teenagers
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Still
A word of caution: Armistice: broken open by poets of war.
Posted in haiku, poetry
Tagged armistice, centennary, peace, veterans, war, wwi, wwii
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Apostasies
from the bible challenge blog God forgive us our daily apostasies: the taking of your name in vain, faking faith, defrauding love; the times we fail to call on you at all; the many ways in which our worship turns … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
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Lasting
Is this how it was for Adam and Eve: old as time and young as their memories; innocence easily beguiled, carrying still the remnants of chaos, shaken off to water the tree? And see who answers their tapping on the … Continue reading
Render
A silhouette against my eyelids, black on red; a name beaten out by my heart’s tattoo; the claim that staked me through and through; I render unto, surrender unto – whose image and title is this?
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged Matthew 22:15-22, render unto Caesar, surrender, Year A Proper 24
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The wedding robe
White lace cut down to a christening robe. Later, a doll with curly blonde hair wore my mother’s leftover wedding weeds, a moulded Miss Haversham preserved in plastic, dressed for the feast, rosebud lips perpetually parted for love.
Vineyards
I cannot grow an apple tree, aromatic herbs, fresh flowers. I dig and plant and water and weed; everything dies. I drink the wine of another’s vineyard, climb the walls to scrump the orchard, cadge the scent of another’s roses … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged Isaiah 5:1-7, Matthew 21, parable, Psalm 80, scrumping apples, vineyard
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Seeing the light
On the carriageway out of the castle about halfway down, the tunnel bends sharply. They told us that a dray horse, poorly schooled in perspective, would find it hard to believe that the tight, bright portal at the end of … Continue reading
Since
I watch her in the early light, her breath slight, her skin soft; barely there, she is solidly unconcerned. Since, she has become like a little sparrow, evasive yet everywhere; I saw one in a Walmart once, swooping between the … Continue reading
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