As is our enjoyable custom, we spent the first hours of the year with our beloved “Soup Group” that was founded in 1966. At that point we were connected by an alley in Goshen.  The connection has stretched, but held.

And, as in custom, we again sang, with somewhat quivery voices “Great God, Thou giver of all good, accept our thanks… .”

Left to right.  John Hertzler, Phyllis Beck, Joy Hess, Ervin Beck, Jan Yoder, Carolyn Hertzler, Dan Hess, Larry Yoder.

The chapbook, as its name implies, brings together photographs and copy. The copy comes in the form of poems and short prose entries.  Sometimes the photos stand alone. Ditto the copy. At other times the two complement each other.

This is the first book I’ve put directly onto the web. I hope you can find your way through the book by following the various prompts. You will also find spaces where you can write comments.

You also will have seen that this website contains my blog. Stop in. Read what’s on my mind. Again, there is space for comments.

Thanks for your visit.

In the coffee shop I try to awaken
to a new day, a new week, a new year.
My chair is a frosty glass pane removed
from wintry rain that drips from icycles.
Across the street Bookmamas
isn’t yet opened, what with slick streets
and a list of accidents.

A weak lamp yellows
the bottom lines of a chalkboard
with today’s specials:
Breve with flavors  3.15  3.35  3.75.

Two women compare class plans,
a man talks of firing up his new laptop.
I sit alone, trying to toast the moment
by dipping a Nonni biscotti
with unsteady hand.

On the wall opposite the gray window,
a humble, haloed saint looks down
upon a morning pianist, who
like a lad trying to cross an icy creek,
tries this key, then that, hoping it holds.

What of this day? What of this week?
What of this year?  Neither the first
nor the second cup offers an answer.

Lucy

Lucy lifts her heavy boots
over the snow to Lye Creek.
By an old beech
fallen to the root,
she finds ice
to break and suck.

Last year I carried her
to the creek. Next year
she’ll run ahead
and hide.

The next and the next
she, like the creek,
will join a larger flow,
in a confluence I might
or might not see.

When Jesus prayed

When Jesus prayed, his words
in wonder of worlds beyond
asked for bread and said
confessional. Nouns and verbs
called for grace and reset
affections. The words, like emissaries,
connected earth and heaven.
“When you pray,
this is what to say.”
But did Jesus, perhaps in the hills,
know anguish that lay beyond phrase,
pain too acute for language,
bread no baker might name,
fears unspeakable,
a wilderness far beyond sound,
the ache of lost love?
And did Jesus, after a night
of waiting, catch heaven’s echo,
altogether silent?

In memorium: Donovan Miller

Come with me to see
autumn leaves laid out
for an evening wake.
Our due is not to clear
the lawn but to make
thanksgiving.
We shall not haste
to rake and break the
foliage that footnotes
the season of their lives.
Once wrapped and folded they
shall be carried in sacred procession
to their burial bin behind the barn
where under the dark vault of
heaven oak, plum maple
and beech shall become nothing.
Yet spring will awake with
storied loam for the asking.

In memorium: Jared Hess

But when a leaf is felled in May
by blight or blade or act of God
we cup it in our trembling hands
and lay it carefully into the book,
a page preserved that may reveal
what we can never know.

God did not pull strings –
puppeteer in the cancer ward.
Prayers did not change platelets,
the fresh bone marrow was no
Deus ex machina.

But our hearts, lumps of sadness,
as clay on the wheel
were shaped by tears
and turned into urns
to receive a gift of grace

Ice

If we let ice be ice  –
sub zero say,
sharp against the tongue,
thicker than safe skating,
sheets of slick,
hard as concrete,
line breakers,
tree snappers,
road blockers,
school closers;

then we’d turn off the alarm,
coffee slowly,
touch the cold
respectfully
and retreat
back into the den,
no urge to
swing axes,
throw salt,
expect the mail,
hair dry the door handle,
dent the fenders
or break a hip.

And we’d wait
until the moody sun
turned this way
and we’d say
thanks too for fire.