Sabbath Among the Ruins



Preface

     These poems were written over many years. They
emerge from the ruins in which we are living, from
my despair of finding a Sabbath, from my persistent
search for it, and from the unexpected discovery that
the Sabbath exists even in the midst of devastation.
     This is the Sabbath: a little rain in the midst of
drought, vision in the very moment of understanding
nothing, a flash of beauty in a broken bowl, and the
miraculous, insistent vitality of the body and the
heart.
     I could have eliminated the earlier poems, the
poems of grief and injury, the poems of the broken
heart, but how then, would we recognize the
Sabbath, and all it endures in order to shine?
     In gratitude, then, for the gift of the seventh day,



Prayer

I want
to get to the heart
of it.

and every living thing

for God
is there.


Invocation

Some of us have spent our lifetimes
searching our bodies
for the letters of flame,
when they arise
some of us burn
and some of us set fires.