• LLANYSTUMDWY

    The small church is tucked alongside the narrow road, its moss encrusted stones bathed in the November sun. The headstones in the churchyard lean askew, sagging under the weight of time. The weeds sprout up answering to a silent call. We are here, they seem to say, to reclaim our own, and we shall do…


  • ANGELIC REALIZATION

    She says she is certain that she has seen the archangel Gabriel. It was late at night, to be sure, but it clearly wasn’t someone of this world and equally clearly not an alien since there was no UFO or wormhole. She knew, as well, it wasn’t God, “Why would God trifle with me, when…


  • AN OFF YEAR

    The was a winter, once, where even in the north the snow refused to fall, ice rejected jamming the culverts, and the sky stared down in amazement. That was the year trees would not bud and flowers fled deeper into the sweetness of the earth, grass sighed and lay indolent. It was a year my…


  • OMNIPOTENCE

    In my dream God came to me, said “look, I need a break, some real time away from the job, not just one day a week, where it’s all I can do to keep up, but a serious vacation, call it a Sabbatical if you want. I need someone to hold the fort and was…


  • THEOI HALIOI ARE NOT HAPPY

    For reasons no one can explain, we have always assumed the gods of the sea have it in for us, witness shipwrecks and storms, and the too occasional tsunami. We assume they are a petulant lot, given to fits of pique and with a means of expression of that pique certainly denied to mere mortals.…


  • PADDIES

    At first it is a checkerboard of ponds neatly arrayed, reflecting the sun, the work of man, for God so rarely plays geometrician with creation, less often still using right angles. Soon enough green blades reach up through the shirred surface, random, reaching for a sun they can never touch. Later, it is a field,…


  • HOLY QUEST

    He says, “I have looked for God or at least for signs of a holy presence but I haven’t found any yet.” She says, “How would you know if you saw God, in a church or in the checkout line at the grocers?” He says, “That’s a good question, I suppose he’d look something like…


  • RETURN FROM NINEVAH

    Jonah, what color is the sun at dawn?           Black as the night preceding it Jonah, what is the odor of spring?           That of rotting rincinus Jonah, what shall we say to a crying baby?           The gates of Ninevah will be…


  • GABRIEL, AT HOME IN OHIO

    I saw an angel settle slowly over Akron dancing in the smoke rising out of the stacks of the ancient plant. It flitted, darting in and out of the gray haze, one moment she, the next he, and as the sun settled slowly down, for an instant no more than a cherub. It was not,…


  • MILES FROM HERE

    Some say Miles said it’s the space between the notes – that’s where the music is. We heard him, we smiled, we anticipated the next note and the next. Outside my window a blue jay recites his morning prayer, the child’s laugh breaks the frozen sky and shivers the maple. Then all is silence –…