the first poem I learned was for my father and was the first poem he ever learned: missing has anybody seen my mouse? I opened his box for just a minute just to make sure he was really in it and while I was looking he jumped outside I tried to catch him, I tried,…
My father, Milton Cunningham, died August 3, 2013. He was a little over a month away from his eighty-fifth birthday. What follows here are what I said at his memorial service last Wednesday, including a poem I wrote for him entitled “The Skin You’re In.” I’m sure many of the words I write over the…
if I count my way around the room we are twelve scattered across tables and couches, close enough to talk but all engaged by screens and books silent disciples of different causes I am facing one who looks troubled though I cannot see what she sees only what she shows in her eyes the brick…
I realize I have been silent here for a couple of weeks. For a number of reasons, I have found it hard to get here. I could not let National Poetry Month pass without one more poem, however. I have been moved by this image and the story of the discovery of the landing gear…
these are days littered with losses the absences seem more present perhaps because we marked eighteen months since my father-in-law died now the news comes of others — one who made me laugh and one who reminded me God laughs, too hard to navigate life without hitting these pot-holes of the heart even the ones…
only steps away from the empty tomb and already we’re walking back to the cemetery alongside a friend who must bury his father most of our footsteps it seems are aimed toward the grave rather than away from it — lazarus could tell you that we are like sheep headed for slaughter we sat last…
Most every year, I am struck by how hard the story must have been to live through the first time around when no one had any inking of Easter on Good Friday. Here’s how that idea came out tonight. then and now by the time Jesus died most everyone had left him in failure or…
Maundy Thursday is a disquieting day for me — a cosmic juxtaposition of hope and despair that strikes on an intensely personal level. Here is how I put it into words. litany syrian war invades a campus that acts as a sanctuary the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out…
by now in most marches — at least at this latitude Easter is made to look like a foregone conclusion new life springing forth in every bed and byway as though resurrection were as natural as daffodils but this year the dirt has stayed as cold as bones and the daffodils duped into blooming all…
we drove home at dusk from our day of errands and dreaming over coffee the sunset was hidden by the foggy veil that showed us only enough road to to keep us moving along every turn of the tires pushed back the curtain enough for another step as we talked about what we had to…