Perspectives Magazine Substack Podcast

This podcast offers a weekly contemplation on the gospel reading of the week in the form of a poem. With this episode, we are embarking on a new poetic journey: a series of ten poems tracing the disciples' path through the gospel passages that we read annually between St. John's Tide and Michaelmas in The Christian Community. Drawing inspiration from John Donne's "Holy Sonnets," the poet employs a "corona" form, where each poem beg...

A fateful dance, and two heads lost. Herod, an old man,seeking solace in youth’s allures,blurred the line between desire and rule. He vowed a gift,and gave away himself.

John meanwhile, was in his cell far from the feast, for saying out loud, what all suppressed:No man—not king nor common fool—may grasp what burnsto have,and in the seizing consumes.

And now the dread climaxof the sensuous dance’s sway: the blood uncoiling, the head u...

I knew a man;

he stood like a mountain

his voice was like thunder

the plates of the continents

trembled at his will.

A will whose roots lay

deep beneath mountains—

too deep for himself

or anyone else

to plumb.

I knew a man;

he was my senior;

he hurt me gravely,

and when at last—

feeling the such pain

that respect could no longer

hold back my tongue,

I shouted my insult loud, to his face–

I saw a shadow

pass over his features,

as he remembered

our place...