IT’S TOO BAD we lost that branch,” my mom says. “Now there’s just a big hole in the middle.” We are sitting on the patio looking at her Japanese maple tree that lost one of its main branches to last winter’s storm. Her comment catches me off guard. Is she talking about the tree or me? [...]
My Place in the Garden
by Heather Sullivan
Early Harvest
by Melissa Dalton-Bradford
Midsummer. Eventide. Live waters. You: broad-backed bundle of golden sheaves hewn down, washed, rushed headlong through death’s threshing current. You: pre-ripe, holy harvest wrested from these, your people; gathered to those, your people who attend from iridescent pastures. You: Firstborn son, First fruits of my womb, Firstling of our flock, First raised of [...]
On Loss
by Liz Busby
IT WAS MY LAST WEEK on study abroad in England, and as with the last of anything, I wanted to make it count. Therefore I was determined to enjoy the play we were seeing at the National Theatre in London, A Matter of Life and Death, even though the plot summary sounded dubious to me—“It [...]
Falls, Gardens, Deaths
by Adam Greenwood
HE SAYS IN NEW MEXICO the weeks before Thanksgiving are High Fall, autumn in abundance, all bright colors and fruits. Thanksgiving is the high point of that season, and also its end. Then it’s whooping crane season, Christmas, and winter. In the weeks before Thanksgiving the cottonwood leaves turned bright pumpkin yellow. We were driving along [...]
Too Late to Say Good-bye
by Dalene R. Rowley
THE SPAGHETTI NOODLES always arrived from Portland in a two-foot long box, carefully curled in half at one end, which made it just possible to ease them slowly into the rapidly boiling water and cook them whole. We never ate them whole except when we had the missionaries over for dinner. It was Dad’s favorite way [...]
Contest Honorees, Poetry, Summer 2007
Law of the Harvest
by Melody Newey
Poetry Contest Honorable Mention I curl myself around warm food in my belly— ancient, first and only comfort. I’m supposed to be rejoicing, sending my son into fields of white all ready to harvest. On sky blue sheets my heart tumbles out of my sickled chest, sends hope and sorrow to heaven where the sower [...]
Contest Honorees, Poetry, Summer 2007
What Abish Saw
by Emily Milner
Weapons falling: swords, spears, arrows, knives, metal clanking metal, final clashes before great clods (warm earth-smelling loam) covered up the brightness of all our crimson sins. All my dear ones kneeling, open-palmed, bowing to greet death, praising God, they died, and died, and died. Almost I fell too, until my eyes met those behind the [...]
Hands
by Valerie Nielson Williams
I walked into the room where you were; You looked so peaceful, resting there. So natural, like you’d looked many times over the two decades I’d watched you sleep. I leaned over and kissed your lips still warm, But not reciprocating now. I smoothed your snow-white hair with my hand. By small measure my heart [...]
Somewhere
by Sharlee Mullins Glenn
She strains toward heaven arms outstretched like a child wanting to be held then falls back, outspent subdued by gravity’s ponderous sway How long must she stay suspended as she is between fire and air between here and there incarnation and release? Do not rage, mother (leave the raging to the poet and his father, [...]