Featured image: detail from “The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus Discovered by Alexander the Great”; folio from a Falnama (Book of Omens): ca. 1550s, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Featured Poem, December 2019-January 2020
His Father’s Words
Matthew 1:18-1:24; Luke 2:41-2:52
Did I believe the dream? No, not at first.
My wife-to-be was pregnant—not by me
but by the Holy Spirit, so the Angel,
lost in light, assured me in my sleep.
And yet, I’d been deceived by dreams before—
They’d showed me what I wished for, what I feared,
or nonsense of no use to anyone—
Why, then, was this one different? In my workshop,
hammer and saw lay on the bench, untouched,
a maze of nails on rough wood that I gathered,
one by one, as if each were a prayer,
What now? What should I do? I thought of Mary,
who was, after all, a child of God
with child herself: an unborn innocent,
and God’s son, if I did believe the dream—
not in the sense we all belong to God
but in a deeper sense both grave and joyous.
And so, I did believe. I made that choice.
What worlds opened then! I was the father
that our Savior knew, our distant Lord
palpable everywhere, yet here on Earth,
in Nazareth, I was the only father,
Mary’s husband, and I shared her joy.
Later, when we searched all Jerusalem,
our son lost in the crowd (I blamed myself),
his mother frantic, strangers baffled, kind,
or just indifferent, I felt something else—
the tug of grief some say is premonition
of the worst we dread—in Mary’s look
the struggle both to blame and not to blame
in transit, orbiting…
When he was found,
I knew the tools I’d given him to use
would lie untouched—that was my punishment—
as Mary wept, and we turned from the temple
where he’d gone, drawn by his Father’s words,
but what of me? I was his father, too.
It was to me he’d turned when lumber split
or tools betrayed him with some minor wound;
when gold-eyed bitterns, driven from the reeds,
strayed near after a storm; or when he ventured
questions any son will ask his father
when the world seems false or threatening
—What words meant spat in anger by a stranger,
what animal’s skull he’d kicked across the sand.
We sons renounce our fathers. I know that.
But, once, I thought I might escape that fate
since I knew from the first I’d give him up
and told myself I’d do so joyfully,
the Angel’s voice grown fainter every year,
the gold leaf on his garments an invention
I believe in less each passing day…
One night, after the temple incident,
I sat outside our workshop, listening
to everything and nothing: rush of wind
in leaves, the distant knock of someone’s cart
dragging through dust, a donkey’s sudden bray,
quail-song cut short, and voices—human voices,
neighbors’ and strangers’—not so far away
or different from our own. And laughter, too—
Mary’s that night, and for a few years more.
Still absent was the voice my son could hear—
my son, not His—in language limitless
because it had been formed from perfect silence,
a higher calling, Lordly lineage
its promise in such words withheld from me
(in spite or mercy I could not be sure),
shared at some distance with the son He’d sent
to suffer, as no real Father could.
(From The Cylburn Touch-Me-Nots and originally published in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, 2017.)
A Selection
A Spell for Lamentation and Renewal New York Encounter Poetry Contest, 2019
From Desire: a Bestiary [Magnificent Frigate-Bird] Verse Daily & Lives of the Sleepers (U of Notre Dame Press)
The Underground Tour New Criterion
A Word the Romans Used First Things
The Sugar Thief Poetry Foundation & The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line Press)
Stella’s Children Look Out from a Photo Faded Gold The Common
East of Tin Pan Alley String Poet
Musicology Delaware Poetry Review (Prince issue)
The Afterlife of Beatles Poet of the Month & Cimarron Review
Live from the Dakota, Major Tom and David Bowman, Glory-of-the-Seas, On Trial for an Imaginary Murder Alabama Literary Review
Fire Victim American Life in Poetry & Lives of the Sleepers (U of Notre Dame Press)
Holy Wars for Us Verse Daily & Upcycling Paumanok (Measure Press)
Text and Flame Scoundrel Time
The Lunar Deniers Light
On Goodbyes Valparaiso Poetry Review & Upcycling Paumanok (Measure Press)
Near Halloween American Arts Quarterly
Remembrances of Yours Per Contra
Dark Horse Baltimore Review & Upcycling Paumanok (Measure Press)
Sea Star Ecotone
Miraculous Spirals Literary Matters
Poems of Resistance
Predictions for the President-Elect Poets Reading the News
Crybully Rattle: Poets Respond
Trump in Triumph The New Verse News
Dream Songs for the Governor of Michigan The New Verse News
Cell Phones Lifted in a Public Square Poets Reading the News
Post-Truth Villanelle The New Verse News
The Dark What Rough Beast/Indolent Books
For a Mother Born During the Great War, A New Moon for Neptune, Wren (Italian Americana feature with brief autobiographical essay)
