Category: Poetry

After Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Gods are like clouds, rain, rainbows; you can see &feel but can’t touch
God chatting in the forest, among the trees,
God is justice, not books
Light shines, out in the darkness
The subconscious energy guides your body
The void within you drives you to express.
You have given life to me, you have given joy to me
You gave what was behind me
You will give what’s ahead of me
Her ways are many, her ways are mysterious
Her interpretations are many, her meaning is one
She’s an editor, changes my manuscript
Holding your voice deep within
Filling with feelings of pleasure to treasure
There’s a certain slant of light, there’s a certain slant of sight
Thanks to the morn, thanks to the noon
Thanks to the flower, thanks to the valley
This blessed life, this blessed grace
To act, to find, to feel, to live
Poems are written by bores like me
But only God’s grace showers freely

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Pulkita Anand is an avid reader of poetry. The author of two children’s e-books, her most recent book is we were not born to be erased: an eco-poetry collection. She has also published in New Verse News, Green Verse: An Anthology of Poems for our Planet (Saraband), Comparative Women, Origami Press, Asiatic, Inanna, Bronze Bird Books, SAGE Magazine, The Sunlight Press, and elsewhere.

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash.

Sensitive

Sensitive
is
a
word

that
shivers
off
the
tongue

expecting
a
laugh

instead
silence,
only
quiet.

 

The Janitor

I’m
happy
where
I’m
at

pushing
the
dustmop

I’m
in
the
light.

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Danny Barbare’s award-winning poetry has been published widely, most recently in the Birmingham Arts Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, and many other online and print publications. He lives with his wife and his sweet dog Oliver, a Boston Terrier, in Simpsonville, South Carolina.

in wind & flame
they felt acknowledgement

fill that room stronger

than any wind felt before
these gales of rushing promise

Spirit sent flames astounding

light dazzling all who were 
there not speechless but into

all speech forever one tongue

of many flaming voices moving 
all, filling all, powering all

with surge of bright burning

receiving His love of 
dove descended blaze.

℘℘℘℘

Ed Higgins is an American poet and short fiction writer whose work has appeared in various print and online journals. Ed is Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. He has a small organic farm in the United States of America, where he raises a menagerie of animals, including a rooster named StarTrek.

I.
The west-to-east wind
breathes the leavings
from a few naked groves 
across to up against 
where there’s no more field;
it creates a waiting
on the verge of woods like an
invasion.

But the fodder stays, relents
puts up no fight
shows itself in piles
to the lorn few
or the theologians or the simple
or the true
in all this angled light
the small houses
the spare lots, the pines
the hardwood
all are convinced
the dry months
will come
and cold.
And cold.

II.
Roberta smiles through broken glass
of west facing windows
sees highways cracked and broken,
road-tar having oozed
from a thousand Augusts, now
as still as Rome.
She smiles without knowing that
her own empire stumbles
and falls down
to only a trace.

As the day turns red
out towards Columbus
she watches as some lights
come-on
beyond a hedge
out under where 
the linings of
clouds make 
bloodshot edges.
The sky behind 
has already lost blue for gray
for black
and Roberta chuckles
at all the overlap
the lifespans make,
shortening our idea
of forever.

III.
The grace of those numbers
too big to consider
the size of that sky is there
whether noticed
or not and the God of such distance
as to be here and here
soaks Roberta’s fabric, utterly.
And what she wears
can’t lose its weather
being a host
for those things
never to be
tagged.

℘℘℘℘

L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Galway Review, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere. He is the author of four collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection – Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, and he writes and plays music. Abel resides in rural Georgia, USA.

‘Believing in the Light you shall not abide in darkness’. – George Fox (1654)

Light’s labour
is to tell darkness back,
push it toward eternity’s edge –

although much darkness slips back
through, grieving the hearts 
of all who must live here.

Like lead, darkness weighs
nearly as much as gold.

But Light’s feel 
is the alchemy of love
falling in bright colour, 

as stars sometimes do,
back to earth’s gravity.

There turned to chemical
(even among fireflies)
it burns gold-like

attracting more love still,
across open hearts,

against night’s threshold.

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Ed Higgins is an American poet and short fiction writer whose work has appeared in various print and online journals. Ed is Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. He has a small organic farm in the United States of America, where he raises a menagerie of animals, including a rooster named StarTrek.

loved in Pure Land – awe
– four generations fam, friends –
fortunate – poof gone

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Gerard Sarnat is an American poet, aphorist, and humorist. His work has been widely published in journals and newspapers. He currently serves on the board of Climate Action Now.

 

This thirst for love,
is it a product of evolution
or a longing for home?

This yearning has seen me
chasing mirages and drinking saltwater
until dehydration became an identity.

Would this thirst be satisfied
if my childhood was well-watered
or I could draw from a well of relationships?

Or would my soul still pant
for water of a different kind,
a never-ending and life-giving source?

Do those who have drinks nearby
even realise they are thirsty?

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replanted
after Psalm 1

dig in deeper
to the river
running living water
my roots dive for
depth strives for
after dusty shallows
rocky fallows deserted
so I’m thirsting
from the working hard
to stay alive
and now it’s simple
to truly thrive
by the source
realigned with this replanting
though the uprooting
from familiar
mud dried up
shook the muck
from my feet and I
am replete
digging deeper
down
into
the river

— ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ —

Prayer of a wilting tree
with Psalm 1

Is the stream in a lush
field of grasses and many trees
to surround this one replanted
for its hope for happiness?

Does the stream divert to the desert,
meet the tree half way in
this shift towards rebirth?

Holy One, if you are the stream,
I believe you will meet this
tree where I’ve fallen, my re-
planting a resurrection for restoration
of this wilderness with me.

And Holy One, if you are rich
earth, the field of green growth
in vital soil, I believe I’d like
to return, dig my roots in deep
and feed on your life-giving love
among the other replanted trees
you have rescued.

Show me what I need, Source
of Life, a stream to meet me,
in a distant field, or homecoming
to your good earth.
Amen.

— ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ ℘ —

In the warming air
a psalm

Sun beams kiss the clouds white,
their linings, silver on a cobalt
canvas, pull cotton strings
to float my sinking heart.

That’s you all over, Creator,
isn’t it? Bouncing balloons across
horizons to evoke delight from even
the gloomiest of days;

it’s creation singing its silent
ode to you, is it not, turning
mourning cloths to dancing robes,
catching us all unawares.

It’s your notes the bees hum
when humans lose the tune;
your melody the wind runs
wild and free with the birds:

lift our hearts with yours,
all you trees, and fields crowded
with flowers singing – bring
us home into the Song.

℘℘℘℘

Image: Camille Brodard | Unsplash

Sarah Agnew is a storyteller, poet, and minister with the Uniting Church in Australia, in placement with Christ Church Uniting, Wayville, on Kaurna Land in Adelaide. Sarah’s poetry, liturgy, and other writing, including the Lenten Study with Psalms, Through the Valley, can be found at sarahagnew.com.au