My poem “The Common Question” appears in Issue #11 of The Other Journal, an online review of Christianity and culture. The Other Journal features scholarly essays, creative writing, and artwork; themes change with each issue. Currently they are accepting submissions on Education.

Also worth noting in Issue #11, “The Atheism Issue,” are Randal Rauser’s essay on the proper roles of apologetics and personal testimony in making Christianity seem plausible to a skeptical audience, and Somanjana C. Bhattacharya’s article on how activists are pressuring Craigslist to stop running “erotic services” ads that sell trafficked women and children.

The Common Question 

    “What does Charlie want?” – John Greenleaf Whittier


Oh, the unfairness of being myself.

There ought to be a rule.

So many days as a little boy, so many days as a deer, a centipede, a Masai warrior, a wealthy old lady with too many rings, on an ocean liner.

And as a blacksnake, a woman with cold red hands hanging laundry, a boy picking dried corn out of the dust, a thirsty fox.

Myself even, or especially, on a good day: unfair, unexplained.

I want to be God, only without His mailbag.

Just an instant to see the plan from His mountain.

Then I could lie down satisfied in my reasons.

Because this world I am in is not the world.

And never will be more than my racing-away circumstance, my rain barrel.

Filled by the weather that happens here and leaking into the soil where the man of the house set it down.

In green dusk the rowboat, cradled
on lapping waves, floats unmanned
like the largest among fallen leaves.
The wind leans on the pier, wood answers
its old spouse, not needing half the words
to understand the familiar reply.
And still the scrub grass grips, leans into 
      each slap
of water and reclines gleaming.
Every leaf silver in the last light
waving, though there are no more 
      departures.
The trees are changing, cell by cell,
so slowly that they seem to be waiting
for something that is already present.
Flung by a scarf of breeze, a bird’s foghorn 
      hoot
spreads its echo over the lake, telling 
      of distance,
dares ropes to snap and oars to slice
into the eely dark.
But I, having learned of gratitude
so late, my best gift was turning
to leave the grass untrodden, the boat empty.


      published in the 2007 Voices Israel anthology

Before the dam was built our people slept 
   under the water
and worshipped the dark bird-shadows of 
   boat hulls
which passed overhead, seen through 
   the ripples of distance.
Our crops were the weeds and growths that 
   trailed like tears
out of the sunken skulls of fish.
We scarcely noticed the water
weighing on our chests like a stone:
how do you notice a burden that has never 
   been lifted?
Speech went nowhere, a breath released into 
   the thick silence
that bathed us and sealed us in.
To communicate, we handed each other objects
dropped down from boats — a spoon for kindness,
a chronometer for death —
the phrases the gods had set for us.
After the dam was built we lay naked on 
   our dry beds.
It was so light we could not rest.
We had to believe that an element we 
   could not see
was now our own. The shadows we’d 
   learned to worship
streamed from every object. Some of us 
   bowed down
to birds whose shadows flickered across 
   the grass,
some to waving clotheslines’ shadowy flags,
and some to clouds that passed over the 
   whole scene,
dimming our other gods
to nothingness for a moment.
The weight of water being lifted from 
   our chests,
we learned the terror of aspiration, 
   as balloons
soaring, knowing they may burst.
And our words carried through the 
   new spaces
almost more than we could bear — released 
   like us
to travel, to die at unimagined distances.

         published in The Christian Century

To think of faith as mine
is to bar the door.
My precious, my purity,
truth’s little coin I can bestow
or hoard, or nail up to gleam
like the prize on Ahab’s mast.
Is it humility that dumbs
men who should beg for this?
They affront me who have not seen death
shining in the plattered fish’s eye
and on the sleek braided bread,
death diving through the blue air
on the metal wings they trust.
A spoonful of ashes
where the tower stood.
Or still stands. Time collapses
in my eyes like God’s.

This thing I believe
happened once to a man
who possessed nothing but his death—
father-forsaken, letting the light
of the nations go out
like a match dropped from burnt fingers.
What obedience to refuse
to set an example
of faith’s triumph, which is but a subtler
triumph of the will.

I was on that hill, on the spit of land
where the walls fell into flame
and all around me wept, amazed and bloody
as babies after a hard birth
into all that cold space called the world,
their first permanence shaken.
Now you see what I see,
I thought
with relief, God help me.


      published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring/Summer 2003

Snow is melting on the breast of the hill
like milk, the comforting familiar sour smell
of the waking body rises from the earth

and I, who have gone through every day delirious
into featureless night, stunned by the drill 
      and whine
of the frantic machinery of my mind

never resting nor reflecting, conscious yet 
      unconscious
as a passenger all night waiting for flight
to a steel city whose name he can’t recall–

in waiting to see you I find my ease
and lightness, the way the wind suddenly lifts 
      a leaf
from the still hard ground, or the shining smear 
      of rain

streams down the sunlit glass, the drops of water
such fertile transient sparks. It’s a gift
I don’t know how to hold.

Like honey it’s too rich for reality,
too protean to grasp, too sticky to get free 
      altogether:
it changes things, stains them with sweetness.

All I know is I can’t sit with my back to the sunset
in this high sterile chamber, the entire mortal show
of vanishing light only seen on my walls in 
      reflection.

So let a warmer wind play on the harp of the 
      bare trees
and the branches fill up with leaves like notes:
I, too, will sing.

Not smooth and not solid is the crust of the earth
when thawing water cracks and wrinkles 
      the ground.
Our feet quickly grow muddy, heavier to lift.

But above us the frosted trees drop their 
      common diamonds
of melting ice: not imperishable, but in lovely 
      abundance.
And so it goes on, moment by moment.


         from A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003)