Poems from our Lenten Reader
Poems are selected from our Lenten Reader (2020, year A). We are grateful to each of the poets for their contributions to this publication. Photos are by Grant Lewandowski.
DUST.
by Katherine Coogan
Dust to dust
And you wonder
Particles of what
Are they organic
Could they trace back
To human
Would they hold
Some long story
What’s left from a
Long life
The questions
The answers
The memory
The forget
Dust to dust
Specks of the past
Interesting or
Simply brushed aside?
A first memory
As a child sits
Below a window
A quilt tossed above
The light streams down
Magic fairy dust
Abounds
Dust to dust
It’s all we are
And yet
Some breath
Some elements to
Make us grow
Life and death
But in between
Fingertips full of honey
Ravens in an open sky
Slick stones on creek beds
Sea breeze on your cheek and hair
A pulse
Dust to dust
But what will make
Our bones to dance
What joy is underneath decay? Handprints on glass
A mirrors dizzy reflections
An old hymn
A promise of new
Dust to dust
Pilgrims onward
Towards a light house
We are walking home
Roots come unearthed on a well walked Path
Leaving only behind
Though The Mountains Be Shaken and the Hills be Removed
Egan Millard
these bloodshot blue nights and hazy days leave smudges no rain can erase —
the warp and weft of time and space betray the freakish fray, unraveling
the height and heft — each year the autumn winds stir up the ash and dust from Novarupta’s 1912 eruption, scatter it across southern Alaska
from the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes to Kodiak,
grounding planes and darkening the skies as if the cataclysm never stopped —
the jolt that shook a century awake
and brought a mountain to its knees —
and so a hundred years dissolve
with past reborn as future, Earth’s molten rage as dust and landscapes rearranged —
you are already gone and not yet here,
stained with the soot of generations and pure as quivering flame
desert heart
tessa pauls
there are so many days
that the garden in my heart feels more like a desert isolated
dried up
barren...
completely depleted.
what i often disregard
is that desolation is not
a death sentence.
desolation begets discovery.
discovery of mind, heart, soul, and self.
and so, the water trickles in—
not enough to spring forth an oasis,
but enough to feed the hidden and vibrant life that always lingered
below the surface.
within the power of the dust storm is hidden a still, small voice
that awakens me from my slumber and beckons me to find rest in him.
perhaps even Jesus needed some time alone in the desert to discover the freedom
in appreciating the desert
instead of wishing for an oasis.
Obadiah and Elijah
KRISTINA ERNY
O yes, blame me. You’ve
been in hiding so long you’ve forgotten what you look like. You’re a man who emerges while I stoop into every
driveway scanning tufts, less grass,
you came upon me
groaning.
Isn’t that great! And here you
are! A self-made hero masked in
hysteria. Where were you when we needed
a man who could speak? A man who inches into the right time, right place.
No, I’m thrilled, Elijah.
No need for backchecks, but can I keep an ID? Your beard’s got black feathers.
Proof enough. See
dust fill our bowls, now, now, you know
even our children know how to make
little mud cakes. You see, they smile while chewing. I was called.
I stayed.
I fell on my face for you,
justified. I thought I was saved. You’re the prophet, can’t you see
after we end in surrender,
how easy it could be to run again?
Elijah
KRISTINA ERNY
Blame you’ve been hiding. Run, man, I thought.
A forgotten man, after scanning self as hero, came to where you were,
Beard black,
little bowl our dust called prophet, now.
Yes, children too make cakes. check your id, the ego,
we smile how to be
Our even fall while justified.
You’d merge here into time, place, you’ll see.
Thrill was Elijah, who’s grass groaning.
You know right, right? O, it was for me. You’re a no, can’t, no.
I stoop tufted, got feathers easy, inches needed now.
How every man I know could
and I could speak, I could keep proof less me,
again.
while the long way And made into
drives my greatness.
who?
I, you, they in on it
You look like a you in hiding, back for enough, see?
What are we?
I’m chewing upon need.
Stayed surrender isn’t that. When filled,
I end in mud.
Can the face you see
save?
A Lenten Collect by Spencer Clark French
GOD, who molded us from dust,
bestowing the call of cultivating the cosmos;
God, who watched us refuse,
exchanging pearls for peapods, peace for power; God, who came in flesh to rehabilitate us, restoring all things in a humble, human body;
Resurrect us even now, that we may be made new,
that we may rest again in union with earth and neighbor, with You.
And, God, when You call us back to dust,
grant us comfort by Your presence
and by the knowledge of having repaired a little corner of this world. In the power of the ever-active Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.