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By Elizabeth Wickland

Those who walk in darkness will see a great light. -Isaiah 9:2

I donned the sky
like slippers
and waded gently,
ripples of night
forming around
each silent step.

Bending low
I touched the stars,
hanging hopes
on impossible,
uncountable children,
filling the spaces
between my fingertips
with fragments of light.

There is comfort
in this pelagic
pilgrimage, cloak
around my shoulders,
flowing gown
around my knees,
inviting, pulling,
weighing me down
deeper into the dark
waters of baptism.

The depths call
me further still
and the sky slips
from my feet until
I float, wholly unshod,
buoyed on waves
of unfathomable grace
toward the dark horizon
where the star on which
all hope hangs will rise.

By Brendon Sylvester

Keep watch with me:
watch in the darkest watches of the night,
when watching’s watch-word’s “waiting,”
waiting for enough dim light
to grey the far-off edges of the night
enough for us to blink, and count the sheep, and sigh…
keep watch with me when the wan moon hides her face,
when the sleeping sheep make easy prey,
and the stars like sheep keep pasture out in space.

The rabbis tell me David was a shepherd too.
A proud profession, lad, and true,
he, too, kept watch for stupid, thankless sheep
against the lion and the bear. But he
was not so much a shepherd as a king.
His were wars, betrayals, and every prominent thing.
He was too great to keep a shepherd’s cares:
shearing, shovelling, stillborn ewes, long aches—
the agony of staying awake.

Papa says Jacob was a better shepherd.
He was a weary man, a speck
beneath the sky all swirled with unnamed stars,
crawling the virgin vastness of the world.

That is every shepherd’s doom, in the end:
a sojourner in pastures who descends
in valleys far from eyes and hours and hearths
where he can imagine himself the only man on earth.

Sometimes I wonder if Jacob really saw
the angels climbing and descending from God’s gate,
if he really slept in the camp of God,
really wrestled God and won,
or if, despairing, he only dreamed
of a veil drawn back,
dreamed there was ever anything to veil,
dreamed that somewhere behind the cold and black,
behind the stink, the whelped lamb’s wail,
there lurked, might any moment strike
some fierce and secret lightning of the Lord.

I have often dreamed of some such lightning.
I have often fancied myself wrestling with God,
have often nodded, dozed, dreamt for one wild moment glory—
only to find I’m grappling with the air,
only to wake, and, glancing wildly around,
find the world still empty, coarse, and bare.

But never mind all that.
We have a watch to keep, you and I.
Let us go under the black, cold sky
to wait in the field till the dawn’s hushed light,
and keep watch over our flocks by night.

by Ashlyn McKayla Ohm

You call
Across the winter wheat, to where I stand
And weep for green to wake the sleeping earth. 
Not every land is Lazarus, You say. The yield
Is harvested, the story gone to seed. 
Help me turn my face from faded fields,
Find the fallow land, and plant my why—
Within Your seed-shaped scars, I see the sky.

By Betsy K. Brown

Every month she pours the wine, 
Every month she sets the table.
Insofar as she is able
She declares a day to dine
On a feast that’s smoothed as fine
As a newborn baby’s cradle.
Yet, like some unfinished fable
With a moral we can’t define

Still inside her house’s core,
The word barren. Never guests.
Pass the pepper, pass the salt.
Say again it’s not her fault
Every month the table is set,
Every month the wine is poured.

by Amy Lannigan

We went stargazing in the bright of the moon,
An unwise time,
A frigid west wind bringing the first snow;
Stars erratically obscured
By both light and shifting cloud.
Still we stop and look
At the dippers, the queen, the warrior;
Tranquil in this moment,
Enduring,
As we linger in the luminous night.

by Amy Lannigan

If there is a
Winter-time
Goal, it is to
Sit by the fire and be
Warmed. Let the silent
Snowflakes swirl and
Fall, pile up in a
Heap, and let time
Drift too.
Let only the wind speak.

**This is a golden shovel poem based on Ecclesiastes 3:7. A golden shovel is a poetic form in which a line from a preexisting poem is used to create a new one. Each word from the borrowed line becomes the last word of each line in the new poem. In this case, if you read the last word of each line, it comes out as Ecclesiastes 3:7.

By Betsy K. Brown

Oh patient river, staid and slow, you walk
Along the teeth of terrible Mont Blanc
And daily dip your toes into the thaw
To water valley rivers with your awe-
Inducing, icy waters, mineral-gray,
Glinting with mountain-silt in bright array.
Men dug into your eddies, found a plane,
Bags of forgotten letters, dead as sleep,
Awakened by a drill into your ice.
What secrets must a solid river keep,
Not vulnerable or effusive like
Your watery brothers—still, will you explain?