Disregard the dispatch, screw the screed, file away the manifest, slack off on fact sheets, fear nothing but not being here— give rhetoric a rest: there’s such a thing as human need of a moment, bankside in green shade by thickets of blossoming briars, un-grievanced—barely thinking—or dressed— feeling to the bone one’s blessed with what the wind inspires, and there’s no having betrayed some cause in coming here to lie truant on this rack of planks while snakes poke through wavelets with a joke maybe about us out of water, or with thanks they’re not like us thus dry. Come watch clouds morph, collide. Attend to the crazed and cranky fits of herons by the pier: let’s we two, of all people, be here, where even the elephant grass submits, saintly, to the tide.
Terence Culleton has published poems in a variety of journals and reviews. He’s a multiple Pushcart nominee, and several of his poems have been featured on NPR. Mr. Culleton’s third volume of poetry, a collection of sonnets entitled A Tree and Gone, is out through Future Cycle Press and has been featured on the New York Review of Books Independent Press “New Releases” list. It’s available at https://amzn.to/3qDrRqN or through his website: terenceculletonpoetry.com.
Let every stray thought be released down a stream. So I do: bird that sounds like laughter, high school girlfriend, dishes in the sink. Each a paper boat sailing out of reach, to wherever it is the current runs. Do beavers live here? I’ve never seen one. The water rises, spills over the banks, seeps into my flimsy shoe. Stray thoughts are all I’ve got.
Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer. He is the author of I Close My Eyes and I Almost Remember, and his poetry has appeared in Rust + Moth, Pithead Chapel, and EcoTheo Review, among others.
I laundered my iPhone the other day, left in a pants pocket bound for washer glory. After all the agitation and spin ceased, below the damp graveclothes, I found its corpse, cold and dead, circuitry and battery drowned. Ashes to ashes, suds to suds. How our lives seem to rely on our phones. How anxious we feel about sudden loss! But fear not, iCloud carried a backup. After purchasing and registering a newer model, restoring from the heavenly Cloud began. Soon, all my old apps, photos, and music miraculously appeared on my new phone. My old phone’s configuration, its personality, its spirit, its soul, resurrected in the new model. The same soul in an upgraded body, newer, sleeker, faster, better, more glorious. A promise to us all.
Reprint: Originally published in Time of Singing, 48:1 (Spring 2021), p. 30.
Mark Stucky has degrees in religious studies, pastoral ministry, and communications. After being a pastor, he moved into communications and has been a technical and freelance writer. During his day job, he documented diverse technology products. In free time, he’s written articles, stories, and poems on a variety of (usually spiritual) topics. He has received four dozen writing and publication awards. For more writings, see cinemaspirit.info.