Returning, Ever Returning

at the brink of an evergreen world

This poem was originally published in The Clayjar Review’s “A Thrill of Hope” volume in December of 2024. I’m posting in celebration of this beloved literary journal’s recent Substack milestone, and in gratitude for the way it curates “human works housing the presence of God.”

If God’s presence is in this poem, it is only because he is not separate from any of it: the geese and the swollen river, the hope and the raggedness in me. He is the food and the feeder. Thanks be.

Returning, Ever Returning

High in the gray blue rain, a black ribbon
                ripples and honks.
Banks below barely contain a swollen river
                winding through town.
Last year, I stood with hope caught
                in my throat, at the brink
of an evergreen world, and the calls above
                echoed my own soul.
I return to this space, because You’ve
                invited me here. Me, ragged,
unraveled me. Just as birds, beckoned by
                some voice only they can hear, return.
Like the river runs heedless, hurried
                to answer a churning sea.
I do not know what I’ve come to find, only
                only You at my side, filling
my lungs with cedar and fog. Gently, You point
                to the geese feeding
in dormant fields, returning, ever returning.