Archive for Spiritual Poetry – Page 2

Mountain Hemlock

Mountain Hemlock by Paul J. Willis (Tsuga mertensiana) Bent under snowpack at timberline, wait for release. At summer solstice, spring into sharp air, shed and fling the ice clods from supple branches. Half-stooped from nine months in little room, make your bows to the world. —from Say This Prayer into the Past

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Rosing from the Dead

Rosing from the Dead by Paul J. Willis We are on our way home from Good Friday service. It is dark. It is silent. “Sunday,” says Hanna, “Jesus will be rosing from the dead.” It must have been like that. A white blossom, or maybe a red one, pulsing from the floor of the tomb, […]

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San Ysidro Canyon

San Ysidro Canyon by Paul J. Willis Yesterday my daughter slipped from underneath an overhang some sixty feet above the ground. She had climbed so sure and ably to that hold. I squeezed the rope and stopped her almost casually, bolts and slings and carabiners doing their allotted work. There was one second no not […]

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Late October, Mineral King

Late October, Mineral King by Paul J. Willis It is the kind of afternoon in which shade and sun please equally. Smoke-filled valleys pale below, but we climb into bluer skies on remnant snow in the ravines. How does the trail know where to turn? Why do the wood grouse wait for us around the […]

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A Likeness

A Likeness by Paul J. Willis (Quercus agrifolia) Live oaks and elephants, the gray curled skin, hard-shifting shanks and knees. These trees never forget what they take from earth, what they give back. Birds land on their heads all day and bask in sky till fog rolls in. Then thick feet lumber and stand while […]

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Sierra Says

Sierra Says by Paul J. Willis Mosquito says, remember me. Stream says, willow, willow. Lake says, leap trout. Meadow says, shooting star. Snow says, suncup. Granite says, old bones. Glacier says, bergschrund. Cloud says, thunder coming. Sun says, sun says, sun says it all. —from Visiting Home

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In Residence

In Residence by Paul J. Willis The trees don’t move. Incense cedar, ponderosa. The sturdiness of Douglas fir, white oak, leaves with lobes. Small brown cabins grow up quietly at their feet, but the trees are the ones that live here. We come and go, enter and exit porch and door, but no one opens […]

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Idling for One Minute Only

Idling for One Minute Only by Paul J. Willis Here is a sign that surely reflects the Puritan heritage of our college. For though it is meant for the coaches that pull up to the curb, disbursing limbs of basketball players who loiter at the back of the gym, I always think it applies to […]

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Oak

Oak by Paul J. Willis I am the heart of an oak, the core, the center, the eye in the dark target of rings. Far from the sap, I go it alone— no need to eat and drink, to feast all day like new wood under the bark. Excess of youth is far in my […]

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Vacation Condominium

Vacation Condominium by Paul J. Willis The mirrors on opposite walls present us to ourselves in regression, as if going back in time to rooms we used to occupy. The people there are bewildered to be so small and distant, dismayed to be merely former selves. So they wave us back into their diminishing frames […]

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