God’s Grief
Great parent
who must have started out
with such high hopes.
What magnitude of suffering,
the immensity of guilt,
the staggering despair.
A mind the size of the sun,
burning with longing,
a heart huge as a gray whale
breaching, streaming
seawater against the pale sky.
Man-god or beast god
god that breathes in every pleated leaf,
throat sac of frog, pin feather and shaft-
god of plutonium […]

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“In poetry, language is not the only medium; silence is also a medium. We might even say that, in poetry, the very purpose of the language is to inflect the silences. It’s like after church bells ring: the air resonates with their sound. In poetry, the silences are resonant, from the language that precedes them. […]

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Excerpted from “Renascence”
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, –
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and […]

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Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII
Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
Pour yourself […]

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Adam
Marveling he stands on the cathedral’s
steep ascent, close to the rose window,
as though frightened at the apotheosis
which grew and all at once
set him down over these and these.
And straight he stands and glad of his endurance,
simply determined; as the husbandman
who began and who knew not how
from the garden of Eden finished-full
to find a way out […]

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As Once the Winged Energy of Delight
As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the […]

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“The Light Comes Brighter”
The light comes brighter from the east; the caw
Of restive crows is sharper on the ear.
A walker at the river’s edge may hear
A cannon crack announce an early thaw.
The sun cuts deep into the heavy drift,
Though still the guarded snow is winter sealed,
At bridgeheads buckled ice begins to shift,
The river overflows […]

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Hope
Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in […]

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(photos of doors on St. Charles Ave and the Loyola Campus in New Orleans)
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts

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(photos of the stunning oak trees taken in Audubon Park in New Orleans) 
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
** Make sure to visit this week’s Poetry Party — one more day to submit your poem and be entered into the drawing to win a set of Spring Prayer Cards **

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