"...and yet, within that curse
        had burned a seed, sown like a spark,
        that sang of freedom from the dark
in veiled and pregnant verse...."

Mary and Eve

"And still, every night,
You transfigure with love
these waters above
into wine."

Eventide

"become a sieve that sifts the soil, prepares
     it for the seed, the sower; let them be
     an inn with fire and food and company
for tired travelers on their way...."

Let my words

"I wish I didn’t know who George Floyd was,
had never heard his name or seen his face
displayed on screens or blazoned on brick walls,
unbreathing monuments to life erased...."

Image

"Incessantly, the water poured and poured
over my calloused feet. The dappled silence
stretched long and dead like trees across a gorge,
the fallout of some rot or hidden violence...."

Judas in the Upper Room

"When I drink in the stars and upward sink
into the theater your words have wrought,
I touch unfelt immensity and think—
like Grandma used to pause in patient thought...."

The Shallows

"The hugs we give our kids, the prayers we pray;
the ways we serve our parents, spouses, friends;
the sins forgiven, wealth we give away;
the strangers whom we welcome, ways we bend...."

Cultivating

"What if, instead,
we had a monstrous steel statue,
a modern-day Molech,

its bloodstained stainless steel
altar rimmed with polished wood...."

American Altar

"The Suffering Servant suffers still:
     Accosted by an angry mob again,
          Not in Gethsemane with clubs and swords,
          But Washington D.C. with guns and words
     On signs: His name twisted, taken in vain...."

Jesus Among the Insurrectionists

"Creator God, who spoke the world,
Who breathed Your life into our parts,
Who authored us — O Living Word,
Your name is written on our hearts...."

Spirit & Scribe (Writers' Prayer)

"We shudder at the inhumanity,
the crafted cruelness of that sickening show:
the stripped humiliation, blasphemy
of beaten flesh, death’s agonies stretched slow...."

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

"I am no longer mine but wholly yours,
so wield me as you will: assign my rank
among the great or small; fling wide the doors
to honor or humiliation, thanks
or accusation...."

Covenant Prayer

"The posted rule says keep your dogs on-leash.
But if a black man asks you to conform,
feel free to treat him like a dog, to storm
at him and point and threaten to unleash
that well-worn discipline...."

The Rule

"...'Where are you now?' he wrote.
You with the great art in you, where are you?
'Withering unknown on your dying bed
Because you were afraid to risk?'....”

Lines Last

"We were almost used
To living in the dark,
To being powerless,

That day you quietly
Pulled the lid off the sky...."

On a Cardinal Climbing Down a Manhole to Restore Power to 400 Homeless People

"This Christmas Eve
My infant son
Lies wrapped in swaddling cloths
And oxygen tubes...."

Breathe

"...Still, you jump. Though the price
is too high, though men smother you still—quiet,
your courage cuts like rivers, cries
out like blood from a field soaked silent...."

Michael Stalcup

Selected work