Jesus

      poems

      Copyright © 2018 David Craig. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4688-1

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4689-8

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4690-4

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      “There is, writes the poet, ‘a pretty loud party going on in the other world.’ And with those words David Craig takes us on a journey of spiritual longing where ‘each little moment’ on earth, though suffused with astonishment and love, is only a ‘pauper’s map to heaven.’ Throughout this book, the reader encounters the quotidian juxtaposed with the extraordinary—each and all a wonder. While Craig tells us, we might be ‘more lost/than would seem possible,’ he also exquisitely reminds us that ‘It takes nothing/to truly celebrate.’”

      —Lois Roma-Deeley, author of The Short List of Certainties

      “David Craig’s poems read like something written by a hip Franciscan, filled with a surprising sense of self-effacement and humility, mixed with a continual note of celebration for the things of this world: sunsets, sunrises, the chirp of birds, his beautiful family, the happy howl of his two dogs. Somehow he makes you feel, as he says, as if Jesus were in fact, ‘to walk down the middle of our street / happy to sit with us on our back porch,’ to ‘talk about whatever we need to belong to / at the moment.’”

      —Paul Mariani, author of Epitaphs for the Journey

      “David Craig is one of the best poets working today. His poetic vision might be best described as ‘mystical realism,’ and to serve that vision, Craig has evolved a demotic yet lyric style that resembles Emily Dickinson’s in its nerve-end economy, William Carlos Williams’s in its plain-spoken diction and disarmingly unpretentious tropes, and CK Williams’s in its candor of address.”

      —David Impastato, editor of Upholding Mystery

      “The speaker of this collection is someone the reader wants to visit with and learn from. The subtle fusion of tenor and vehicle in his metaphors is a good technique for a fine Catholic poet whose readers need not be Catholic, but only seekers after the metaphysical, trying to find a refreshed vision. On one level these are simply poems about innocence and grace, and how these factors serve as a compass for living a good life in a society where they are underrated and ignored. This collection is satisfying to mind, heart, and spirit. The reader will return to it for refreshment and inspiration.”

      —Janet McCann, author of Buddha in the Barbed-Wire Garden

      “I believe David Craig to be the foremost religious poet of the day whose special gift it is to reveal the presence and care of God in all things—especially the most unlikely things. He gives us poems as rich in humanity as they are of the mystery of God, which is the same. He is doing the work he was called for, and we are blessed by the presence his words generate.”

      —Howard McCord, author of Collected Poems

      “This collection is clear-minded, heartfelt, and so reverent it seems irreverent. ‘That is why I beat this drum, walking up and down the property line.’ Honest and giddy, grateful and ‘I don’t know, happy,’ all the reader can do is rejoice over the fact that there is this kind of voice; that is if he or she doesn’t mind sharing the trolley with Barbie and Ken, a horde of slothful tortoises.”

      —Periwinkle Bleu, Bon Vivant, Wife-About-Town

      Thin 19th century gravestones

      are best, how they lean forward, back,

      though newer, thicker, those more deeply-etched

      dip off-center (sideways) as well, perhaps weighing

      their lucre. In either case, there seems to be

      a pretty loud party going on in the other world:

      maybe the late-night housekeeping staff?

      Plastic cups left everywhere, one or two on a marker.

      But how and to whom can you complain?

      They’ve left parents to be there, old phone numbers,

      baseball mitts—giving up the sunny world

      for the sun; though it seems bad manners,

      not to keep the directly-behind in order.

      And what do the rest of us get out of this disarray:

      morning’s cut of springtime, greenest grass?

      It’s enough to turn you into Rodin, a thinker,

      a college sophomore.

      The sun will set again this evening. I may not like it,

      but it will—in its going. (Nobody ever asks me

      what I think about anything!)

      More last birds, and soon enough the night

      will breathe its dark and pleasant way in, get

      all mythic, talking to us about the great space

      between stars, Steven Hawking.

      Here, on this side, all parties fail—as every

      Buddhist knows, either for want of success

      or because the joy cannot last, or come again. All

      that’s left for us is giving: a consolation, as we ghost—

      never complete–our sunny days, ordering dust,

      furniture, waiting for the rest of us to show up.

      It’s Holy Saturday

      again, and what could exist, does—

      but not here. It’s spring

      as it doesn’t happen in West Virginia:

      humps of green daffodils, trees,

      their darkened daylight dress.

      His smile does not fill these skies;

      our lives, a sigh: a wait

      for what we would be.

      And so this is where we work—

      a shop for shavings or bits of stone;

      an apron, all the little Geppettos,

      Gaudier-Brzeskas; each, every day,

      to his scappy corner, finding

      drama, inventing epics.

      Days need filling—stars invent the sky.

      At least that’s what we tell ourselves:

      rose petals covering the sidewalk,

      a heart taking its sleeve.

      And what else but resurrection

      could give this? We speak words

      that own us, dance to the we they make.

      We