Dec 4, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris
“He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found” Where has the curse not touched or spoiled? Where are his blessings bound? Pestilence, thorns Pollution and greed Infest and choke the farmer’s soil With tired movements against high...
Dec 3, 2016 | Advent, Bible Story, Rusten Walter Harris, Unrhymed Other
In December My memory returns To a small room Near a stairwell The Galleria Uffizi in Florence Alone and in the darkest Of the galleria’s chambers Benefial’s “The Massacre of the Innocents” Hangs Set apart from the well lit halls The painting:...
Dec 2, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris, Unrhymed Other, Winter
Behold in liturgical time Both natural and ecclesial The bowing of the trees The lifting of the hands The giving of the leaves The enacting of nativity The gowning of the ground in white The singing of the old hymns The fasting of the daylight The reciting of ancient...
Dec 1, 2016 | Advent, Rusten Walter Harris
In Matthew’s gospel Three sets of fourteen generations wait for jubilee – The final freeing of the slaves. Will the debt that buries the brow of every seed of Eve in sweat and blood be paid? Will the exiles be brought back -and restored? The mystery of the...
Nov 21, 2016 | Chiastic, Grief, Gus Stevens, Regret, Winter
The woman at the counter said she could not tell me where the poet Roethke drowned. The Bloedel Reserve wanted to put on a happier face, a garden in the wood and clifftop eyes above the grey-blue Sound. The pool where they discovered him was gone; the dying place torn...
