Strife conquered is strife yet,
As a wound, which scars,
Still remains.
Strife conquered, chaos quelled
Teaches not always that
Life prevails over death;
At times, the storm’s
Respite is only cause
To prepare for the next.
In such times, hope may
Abandon; the balm for the
Ache lies not there
In the future, but the present,
In the hand, the embrace
Of another.
(March 7, 2018)
Here you go, a full month late: my favorite books that I read last year, in nine categories. Several of these were not books published in 2019, just books that it took me a while to get to.
Children’s Literature: Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend
YA Literature: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Adult Fiction: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Science Fiction: To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
In Translation: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
General Nonfiction: A Death in the Rainforest by Don Kulick
Memoir: The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang
Christian: The Common Rule by Justin Whitmel Earley
Poetry: Tropic of Squalor by Mary Karr
What about you?
Once upon a time, I was in a band. We traveled across Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska during our college years. If you want to check out our stuff, you can find it here:
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)
May tomorrow be the day
That lives for itself; neither
Past indwelling nor foreordaining.
I’ve faith in many things
God, namely, but others too.
I’ve yet to meet any without.
It’s too frightful a word for some,
Not of the requisite awe for others.
I tend toward the latter today;
tomorrow, the former.
Does it mean just one thing?
Today: not keeping any worries.
And maybe that’s the heart of it.
Not ignorance, but humanity,
in fact.
Knowing that worry is too heavy a task.
I wrote this in 2018 when my spouse and I visited Walden Pond for the first time. It’s lovely, and if you’re ever in Massachusetts, you should swing by.
Two geese across a beach incline
To guide their goslings two; Divine
Is this, a bond of child in flock
With parents who, in patience, walk
Before, their onward paths to make
Secure, lest chaos should betray.
In doing so, a praise is sung:
God’s world, though not in peace, not one,
Inspired by love to bear the pain
Which has not come, but that yet may.
Therein the Psalmist’s aged refrain:
All living creatures praise thy name.
(June 10, 2018)
Hello! You probably know who I am, but my name is Josh. I’ve started this blog primarily as a way to share some of my original writing. I’ll also be sharing a bit of poetry that I find to be meaningful, and discussing other media that seems to resonate with me in the hopes of fostering helpful conversation about art, creativity, and maybe even faith.
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