Dinner

We take your lives,
and you give us delicate flavors:
the communion of the blood of Christ.

—Dale Bicksler, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, is retired from a career in information technology. He maintains a website of his photographs and poetry at www.druthersndragons.com.

Nameless

“I need something bigger.”

So I offer myself, inches taller,
and the mountain, sky, humankind.

“OK, not just bigger, but
something that can provide comfort,
assure me everything will be all right.”

But everything isn’t all right, is it? I mean it
already isn’t and therefore can never be.
Or else it is, without preconception.

Why long for what can no longer be,
or what by faith always is,
when each moment comes
pure and unnamed?

—Dale Bicksler

Copyrighted Earth

Upon receiving some of my poems,
my dad wondered if “the Lord” was in them.
It was like asking if God is in a Bach partita
or a roseate spoonbill or a sunset.

If God is Lord of all, as he would have it,
how could He not be in my poems?
But he meant, did I name his God?
Did I recognize Him as creator?
Did I respect His copyright?

—Dale Bicksler