Renee Kalagayan

The arrival of something / so tender we look away and laugh. —Ralph Burns Spring arrives in tender swaths of light That brush the darkness from the sleeping trees, And drape the dogwood’s

On Sundays I wake early, not stopping To lift the heaviness from my eyes. God will do it, I reason, and He always does—at first, gradually, Until the weight rolls from my

Variation on a theme by Heather Mackay Young It had not died, but it had declined, The swarming mass of silver tendrils Snaking unkempt through the slotted                                                         receptacle. It had been a Mother’

I go to the woods to talk to God, Where the pillars of tree bend kindly, And the branches are whispering sweet Secrets between themselves. Somewhere There is the song of a waterfall,

Five days ago, the city had cut down my sister’s tree, and I’d known immediately that it would be the final straw—the tipping point in my sister’s grief. There

Give me October— Its drooping, sleepy leaves, Its contemplative fog, swimming in softly On the backs of somber sea turtles. Give me the Jagged blades of sunlight at morning, the crisp and Fragrant

I’m a bit sad, a bit heartbroken. I wish I were nine again and in love With no one, nothing except my dream To sail alone to Japan with my tabby cat.

I know I spoke very directly to him, Very much like a lioness Might snap a zebra’s skull in her jaws. I thought to myself, “I’m not waiting.” I’m not

Variation on a theme by Benjamin Myers The congregants file in long lines of two, Ants carrying their burdens forward, Setting them down to rest on holy ground. Let this mother, forehead folds

The place I want to go to              is blustery and wild.                          It is where no car   has driven before,              no man has walked                         before. It is starry,     silvery as sleep,              dainty as dreaming,

One fateful day in seventh grade my class took a trip to The Wilds Christian Camp, where the biggest attraction is the sixty-foot-tall Giant Swing that lifts you up, up, up into the

The blackbirds flock in a cluster of murderous merles The month I am grieving. Blackbirds, They don’t chirp or caw or quaintly whistle. They cry.   In a human sort of anguish that

I do not think it’s a pious display, where Our mouths twist themselves into holy words. I do not think it is an intense windgust That lifts our spirits to momentary devotion.

Now I know, Lord, what You were doing, When You placed that love for the words of the world, and the world, Deep within me, woven so tightly into the latticework of my

When I have doubt that God is near to me, And plunged to blindness, flail about for peace, And find my grasp is weak, and the increase Of sleepless evenings weighs down heavily,

If I were God, I would not have cursed the earth. If I were God, I would have dwelt among the        ponds and peaks I made            instead of leaving it all behind. What

I am trying to remember. How did I heal After Mama’s death? I have not forgotten Truth, but a tad, Faith to believe the Truth.     The churches tell me to remember Where

If you walk a winter’s night, Listen, and you will hear The shrieking wind evade your sight And cry into your ear. It whips away at flowers, And the roses bow their

“Erik, dae ye ken the wind Roving o’er Swaeden? Wha’s the cloud, the billow’d smoke Wi’ danger heavy-laden?”         Erik didna ken the wind; He didna ken the smoke. An’ nae

On the Sunday when my father’s grandfather died, Father got up early and went to the house, yellowed With age and perched on a wishy-washy foundation. When he returned late that night,