Category Archives: poetry

For this Resurrection Day.

church, poetry,

Because every Sunday is Resurrection Day, I give you a poem about Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

He is a path, if any be misled;
He is a robe, if any naked be;
If any chance to hunger, he is bread;
If any be a bondman, he is free;
If any be but weak, how strong is he!
To dead men, life is he; to sick men, health;
To blind men, sight; and to the needy, wealth;
A pleasure without loss, a treasure without stealth.

-Giles Fletcher the Younger, d. 1623

(The work pictured at top is the poet’s most famous, very long poem.)

The rivers have lifted up their voices.

music, poetry, Psalms, , ,

PSALM 92

The Lord is King, He is clothed with majesty;
the Lord is clothed with strength
and He hath girt Himself.

For He established the world
which shall not be shaken.

Thy throne is prepared of old;
Thou art from everlasting.

The rivers have lifted up, O Lord,
the rivers have lifted up their voices.

The rivers will lift up their waves,
at the voices of many waters.

Wonderful are the surgings of the sea,
wonderful on high is the Lord.

Thy testimonies are made very sure.
Holiness becometh Thy house, O Lord,
unto length of days.

Headwaters of the Sacramento, May 2015

It is hard to hear.

poetry, trees, ,

THE REGION NOVEMBER

It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,
So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say
On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.
It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated
On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.

-Wallace Stevens

How beloved are Thy dwellings.

church, love, poetry, Psalms, , , ,

How beloved are Thy dwellings, O Lord of hosts; my soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.

For the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the turtledove a nest for herself where she may lay her young.

Even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; unto ages of ages shall they praise Thee.

-From Psalm 83