This past week I watched my first baseball game of 2025! The major teams have a long season from March to September and play 162 games! Now we are in the playoff season and down to the last 4 teams. I am hooked on the TV coverage of the end of the season. Last year,Continue reading ““fail, and fail again””
Tag Archives: Hope
Fairy Tale!
Fairy Tale!He built himself a house, his foundations his stones, his walls, his roof overhead his chminey and smoke, his view from the window. He made himself a garden his fence, his thyme his earthworm his evening dew, He cut out his bit of sky above. And he wrapped the garden in the skyand theContinue reading “Fairy Tale!”
“Bring the bass back..!”
On a recent episode of the podcast The New Yorker Poetry Sasha Debevec-McKenney chose to read the following poem by Gabrielle Calvocoressi – obviously the poem cannot be edited so please excuse, ignore, or enjoy the expletive! Calvocoressi, who is a nonbinary lesbian, has used their writing to reflect on their mother’s mental illness andContinue reading ““Bring the bass back..!””
Inch, yard and foot – All Miracles!
MiraclesWhy, who makes much of a miracle?As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,Or stand under trees in the woods,Or talk by day withContinue reading “Inch, yard and foot – All Miracles!”
“Things fall apart.”
I may be on the edge of copyright law, but I could not resist this recent cartoon in The New Yorker Magazine! These lines (save but the last three words above) I have used many times, over my 40 years of ministry. They come from W.B Yeats’ poem written in 1919 in the aftermath ofContinue reading ““Things fall apart.””
“Washing away all the lines”
If only we could enjoy the beauty of the earth, land and ocean, without borders. These manmade lines somehow demarcate what is home and what is foreign. I love Luci Shaw’s poem Cosmos which dreams of a seamless world and imagines the rain washing away all the lines we have drawn and redrawn over theContinue reading ““Washing away all the lines””
There was a naughty boy
When we think of John Keats (1795-1821) it is not nonsensical verse that comes to mind. We might think of his Ode to a nightingale or Ode on a Grecian Urn. His poem To Hope has the line – “O let me see our land retain her soul, Her pride, her freedom; – Perhaps thatContinue reading “There was a naughty boy”
Paradise
Roger Robinson 1967- is a Trinidadian-British poet. His poems have been praised for “finding in the bitterness of everyday experience continuing evidence of ‘sweet, sweet life.’” In his fourth printed collection, A Portable Paradise published in 2019. The poems originate from the tragedy of a London tower block of homes, Grenfell, which burnt to theContinue reading “Paradise”
Scalpay – Outer Hebrides
A HIGH BLUE DAY ON SCALPAYThis is the summit of contemplation, and no art can touch itblue, so blue, the far-out archipelago and the sea shimmering, shimmeringno art can touch it, the mind can only try to become attuned to it to become quiet and space itself out, to become open and still, unworldedknowing itselfContinue reading “Scalpay – Outer Hebrides”
“It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon-“
The words above “It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon-” seemed to shout to me this morning as I turned a few pages. They come from the middle of a poem by Philip Larkin entitled Coming. The poem itself doesn’t say much about spring or hope so I will settle for theseContinue reading ““It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon-“”
Prayers, Poems, and Christian Ponderings 