Phoebe Anthus: Everywhere the Un-Shy Flowers
Everywhere the un-shy flowers
open towards the sun,
unlike we who gravitate towards grey.
Everywhere their wide mouths cup
Continue reading . . . “Phoebe Anthus: Everywhere the Un-Shy Flowers”
Marlene Brubacher: Not One Word Hath Failed
Surely you will never
Slip from sight, surely never
Fall down a crack unseen,
Continue reading . . . “Marlene Brubacher: Not One Word Hath Failed”
tonight, we attended a quiet instruction class
taken from Genesis One, the Creation,
with our son and his fellow students, a dozen,
in the basement of our private church school;
Continue reading . . . “Sheila Petre: Because”
Phoebe Anthus: Of Deconstruction
He who is never shaken by questions,
invites honesty, dismantling
the worn scaffolding that once held
my everything.
Continue reading . . . “Phoebe Anthus: Of Deconstruction”
Vaschel Miller: I saw mercy jumping like a frog
I saw mercy jumping
like a frog into muddy water;
Continue reading . . . “Vaschel Miller: I saw mercy jumping like a frog”
Hannah K: The Man Behind the Makeup
“Daddy, I can’t see you like that. You’re too scary.”
Emma and Leo crowded around their mother, who held the phone so that their dad could see their wide-eyed expressions. Across the room, I gathered my sweater and purse as I prepared to leave. On the other end of the video call, I heard Robbie chuckle. Continue reading . . . “Hannah K: The Man Behind the Makeup”
Sarah J. Martin: Pine Needles Are Prayers
When I say I prayed this morning,
I mean that I swayed on the swing and studied
The pine trees in front of me
And thought about prayer.
Continue reading . . . “Sarah J. Martin: Pine Needles Are Prayers”
This room has never been my home,
You call me, I will leave.
The problems that I have not solved
Continue reading . . . “Bryan Snyder: You Call Me”
Richard Stoltzfoos: On the Content of Poetry
Write more poems about plants.
The potted kind, yes, but also thickets and forests, and trees
Of definite kinds—the tulip poplar could,
Continue reading . . . “Richard Stoltzfoos: On the Content of Poetry”
My friend’s mother told her,
You will not grow old. Christ will return before
You are trundled up the ramp of a nursing home.
I smiled when I heard. How many are told
Continue reading . . . “Sheila Petre: Once in the End”
Oftentimes off-hand across the gray
Of gloom a memory of a summer day
Inside our country produce stand unwinds,
A day that rhymes with all the days before
Continue reading . . . “Bryan Snyder: Gladness”
Birches branch through phantom roofs above the cracked foundations
Where moss makes patient conquest of the ruins of our creations,
Continue reading . . . “Emily Gingrich: Ghost Town”
“The day is yours, and yours also the night;” Psalms 74:16
At three a.m., the world is crystalized in silence. Even the coyotes are silent, their keening cry absent from the windless prairie. What little sounds there are echo with a clarity that only the stillness of night can conjure. Continue reading . . . “Lori Hershberger: Night”
Richard Stoltzfoos: Large Things to Forget
Once I lived a terror dream that I was all that mattered;
My world was red, in pressed the stresses, flattening as I flattered,
My world an apophatic point upon a blank white wall,
Continue reading . . . “Richard Stoltzfoos: Large Things to Forget”
Hannah K: In Flight (United Airlines 2383)
I will not waste my good tea on this one
it’s a Lipton’s-in-a-paper-cup sort of flight
but still, a cloud blasts past us
in icy pinprick wispy glory
Continue reading . . . “Hannah K: In Flight (United Airlines 2383)”
Michelle Miller: I Love to Walk a Dirt Road in the West
I love to walk a dirt road in the west—
To feel like a speck in the vast world of grass and sky.
I walk and raise my arms.
Continue reading . . . “Michelle Miller: I Love to Walk a Dirt Road in the West”
Encamped along the hills of light, ye Christian soldiers rise.
The familiar words lift my eyes over stained-glass windows
to the vaulted ceiling of the unfamiliar church, far from home,
Continue reading . . . “Rebecca Weber: Hesson”
The summer that we decided to be kind to people was hot. A few years have passed since then, but I still remember how the gardens in our community grew that year. The plants, as fruitful as the Mennonites that raised them, Continue reading . . . “Missy Burkholder: Acts”
See how this yellow
Zinnia petal, alone still
Furled, cups, curls,
And holds the morning world
Continue reading . . . “Sherri Steiner: Nectar”
Shannon Blank: When I, Sick of Self
When I, sick of self, declined to eat or drink
lay down upon my bed
and instead proposed to think
commencing there to query
Continue reading . . . “Shannon Blank: When I, Sick of Self”
