More on: vision

Like Abraham and Sarah at the Mamre oaks before the hard-earned good news, and like David and Bathsheba in the royal house with the tenderness of the first night, my sainted mother and father rise in the west over the sea with all the glows of God upon them— for all the weight of their…

He’s Isaiah sometimes, sometimes Elijah, or even the Son of Man, though no one on earth would ever see a prophet—much less a divinity— in Willie, back on probation, rumpled and stinking. His lank hair’s dyed a color not found in nature. His lips clamp a roll-your-own smoke gone cold. I’m a coward. I play…

His voice nearly gone _________________(add enough water and pigment thins) she’s listening to the plainsong of doves in the garden, ______________________their__ you__ you __you calling her slowly back to herself until she’s jarred by laughter coming from ______________________________who is it below her window facing the avenue du Général Baron Robert? Footsteps. Three knocks at the…

In the middle of the day, I was lost in thought, staring at my newly dead father, or the portion of him the funeral home gave me back in a cheap little plastic urn I’d placed on my study’s mantle. I’d been reading about Bede’s sparrow, which, it turned out, was not Bede’s at all,…

It is March; in Ireland daffodils will be suffering the harshest winds; here the coach had turned back from the slopes of the Beatitudes towards Tiberias; to the right the valleys, green and flush, rising to the hills; to the left, the lake, quietened in an evening lull and pleasuring; I settled in my seat,…

Once in the desert he said he saw the shape of a man, a body, the line around it neither light nor dark standing speechless in his path. That he could feel his shirt draw back against his body his mind was already giving back to fear until the figure turned to yield and let…