Click here to see all of the poems in The 55 Project.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Poem 027

Waiting in Line at the Bread Alone Café, I Consider Isaiah

Behind the counter, baskets
heap with loaves: honey wheat, rustic white, focaccia,
peasant rye, oatmeal with walnut and cranberry.
I want a slice of each, toasted,
buttered. I want one slice spread with red pepper or onion jam, another
set aside for sweetness. I want to see
how nuts and berries settled and rose with the dough,
how the dough palmed chunks of fruit.
I want crusty rolls, biscuits, the gold,
the dark, and I want
crumbs to scatter as the bread
opens under my serrated knife. I want life to lengthen
until I’ve tasted every variety,
and then I want a second turn.

But today I will choose
one loaf to carry home because fresh bread
persuades me to linger over breakfast as if time
opened into eternity each morning,
as if morning promised
not eternity but attentiveness, each moment’s flavor,
my absorption in it.

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Lynn Domina of Delhi, New York, is the author of two collections of poetry, Corporal Works and Framed in Silence, and the editor of a collection of essays, Poets on the Psalms. She is an M.Div. student at the Earlham School of Religion, where she takes courses in the Ministry of Writing. "Waiting in Line..." rises out of Isaiah 55:2.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Poem 026

Looking Forward

after Michelangelo’s David

The seventeen-foot-high
marble giant—
unable to wear the king’s
encumbering armor—

stands naked
twisting contrapposto
—as conflicting as a guilty man
freely pardoned—

sling slung over his shoulder,
right hand clutching solid rock—
like a fortress
resistant to hammer-blows—

eyes pierce through centuries
looking at Rome—
crucifier of his Savior
fruit of his loins—

unaware that curls are coiling
a premature crown
above his ears.
Ears listening

to a promise recoiling
through the millennia
I will make an everlasting
covenant with you.


He stands silent as white—
a witness to the peoples.

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Nellie deVries of Grand Rapids, Michigan is one of the members of the Festival Circle where this blog was first introduced. This is her second contribution to The 55 Project. She has authored three books for children that were published by Baker Book House. "Looking Forward" was sculpted from Isaiah 55:3, 4 & 7.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Poem 025

With, Without

It begins with a body
strapped for cash, alert
only to economies of thirst. Ends

with a body moving
to the music mountains make,
the phrasing of lakes, cloud

improvisations. The journey
is personal. Spills
occur, with or without

words like covenant, splendor.
Endowed with splendor, a body
travels light, eats well with

or without utensils, money, food. Feeds
multitudes unaware, alert only
to birds, grass,

lilies, the like. As
for those who destroy the earth,
they will be destroyed.

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Brad Davis of Pomfret, Connecticut is a counselor at the Pomfret School, and has taught at the College of the Holy Cross, Eastern Connecticut State University, and the Stony Brook School. His latest poetry book is Still Working It Out (Poiema Poetry Series/Cascade Books). Visit Kingdom Poets to find out more about him."With, Without" is drawn from Isaiah 55:7. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Poem 024

Skipping Stones

Less substantial than mist
Time is too fleeting to be grasped;
Reach out your hand; the moment is already gone.

We live in the future or the past,
Where all is illusion,
And beyond our power to control or change.

Do we heed the power of our actions?
Or are we merely skipping stones across the pond of eternity;
Children playing at life as though summer will never end?

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Carol Ann Chybowski of Carpinteria, California has had her work appear in A Community of Voices: An Anthology of Santa Barbara, and Spiritual Awakenings: Stories of Praise and Redemption. "Skipping Stones" comes out of Isaiah 55:6.