There will be a tenth portion in it like a terebinth whose stump remains

During my predawn walk I stepped over you again at the place you fell in the path. I’m surprised no one has carted you off to sell to summer campers. Perhaps others too feel sympathy for your broken back for the way your limbs no longer hold the sky. Or maybe how you’ve rested your […]

Pentecost

It began with a word spoken then written finally seared into flesh. A word like the wind weaving between us between everything where beginning is end end a beginning and we, one mess of mixed material, miraculously maintain heat. This mystery, this puzzle of the Pneuma seeks neither solving nor secure mounting on a block […]

31,000 Feet

I level off at 30,000 looking to avoid turbulence, to find a gentle way forward. I know what you’ll say that I ducked my head again, failed to reach the expected altitude— sought smooth travel over the tumble and shake of you. Maybe I have. Maybe baby your quaking body has slid me off my […]

He showed them all his treasure house

One can measure the space between us in cubits of stacked silence each minute a gold bar put away for a day that won’t come. Some still hold hope in bronze ages—a pay they can weigh in years, unfold like crisp centuries to lay in your palm. But I am seconds from where I […]

Each of them eats the flesh of his own arm

It tastes like chicken but the tendons tend to stick in the teeth. We got hooked after just a few bites. Our churches are full of those who’ve had their fill. It’s a wonder there are any arms left to lift in praise or elbows to guide a bride down the aisle. It’s hard to […]

The Weight

Death is heavy. It takes six able-bodied men to carry it. Even then, they must use a wheeled cart to load it into the waiting car. Slowly, it will move ahead never out of sight as they follow one by one to the graveyard. Copyright © 2019 by AJ Saur, from Particles in Motion (Murmuration […]

The Stones Will Cry Out

If it was the unfolding tongue of a tiger lily or the loosed vocal cords of the chrysanthemum I would expect to hear a female voice perfuming the air with praise to the passing prince. But a stone shouting always sounds male to me— a gravely Glory to God in the Highest. I could perhaps […]

Crocus Coup

They rise up in April purple veined with white as if stained by snow— winter’s scar on the fresh skin of spring. Seemingly fragile, frail they prove surprisingly sturdy bearing the heavy hopes of every soul who stops to marvel, mouth agape. Covert color charging through the ground’s frozen front waving their violet victory flag— […]

Shower

You enter naked, stripped of those last vestiges of vanity. Everything’s now out in the open. This is finally the you you are. And you are welcome here with a warm caress poured gentle over bent head, burdened shoulders. Close your eyes give yourself to it, let its love roll down, touch every imperfect thing […]

Perichoresis Moves in Place

I wonder if Jesus daydreamed about it while sanding a sideboard or varnishing a table. Did he, on occasion, hold a newly crafted chair by its arms twirl it around the carpentry shop? What inexplicable joy he must have felt finding his new body moving in ancient ways, those familiar steps keeping beat with his […]