Writing and photography by Gene Hyde
“When preachers in the rural Methodist churches I attended as a boy spoke of grace, I thought of rain.”
– Scott Russell Sanders
Grace falls into this
Measured chalice, taunting us
To cipher Heaven.
But who could count the
Ageless rains, cleansing countless
Pilgrims, pulsing through
The Ganges, the Nile,
The sylvan-clad French Broad: each
Sky-soaked to the brim?
Originally published in Valley Voices: A Literary Review, Vol .18, No. 2, Fall 2018
Photo and poem © Gene Hyde
This is the first ekphrastic poem I published. ” Athabasca River Glacial Melt Global Warming Blues” was published in The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada (Vol. 16, No. 2 2018). It’s at this link: The Goose
Athabasca River Glacial Melt Global Warming Blues
“For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple”
– Mary Oliver, “Winter Hours”
Afoot by the flow
Of temples, of hallowed snow,
Of the glacial cloak:
Peaks wrapped in white rime
Frozen, riverine, sublime,
A shroud, nigh revoked:
Athabasca blues,
Pilgrims wading in the pews:
Doused, yet still afloat.
