Superb owl, bad call
walking through the churchyard
where people have been buried
in good clothes
I hear the owl again
and do not look
Poems on the topic: church
Poems on the topic “church” on Poets.by.
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Three thin monks, southbound
pass a street hawker sporting
that same shade of orange.
Old man shakes his head
but does not move over,
his thumbnails, talons.
On her knees, she sings
at the church door, 10 pm;
is He still at home?
Heat on my left foot
toes crimped against the dresser,
enough for tonight.
“Live in the moment!”
…well, except for that clogged drain
back in my shower.
The madwoman!
Rev. Joseph Williams
Being a Man of God
and a child of flesh and blood
my soul thirsting for truth
and my body hungering for eat and drink
realizing that the satisfaction of one
depended upon the survival of the other
and this could best be done
by preserving the Second Baptist Church
and that on the sisters
depended such preservation
you can understand
why the congregation stuck together
and why, when I died
the sisters mourned
and why so many children
will likewise search for truth
Poet to His Love
An old silver church in a forest
Is my love for you.
The trees around it
Are words that I have stolen from your heart.
An old silver bell, the last smile you gave,
Hangs at the top of my church.
It rings only when you come through the forest
And stand beside it.
And then, it has no need for ringing,
For your voice takes its place.
Spires
Spires of Grace Church,
For you the workers of the world
Travailed with the mountains...
Aborting their own dreams
Till the dream of you arose--
Beautiful, swaddled in stone--
Scorning their hands.
Train Window
Small towns
Crawling out of their green shirts...
Tubercular towns
Coughing a little in the dawn...
And the church...
There is always a church
With its natty spire
And the vestibule--
That's where they whisper:
Tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz...
How many codes for a wireless whisper--
And corn flatter than it should be
And those chits of leaves
Gadding with every wind?
Small towns
From Connecticut to Maine:
Mr. Wells
On Sunday morning, then he comes
To church, and everybody smells
The blacking and the toilet soap
And camphor balls from Mr. Wells.
He wears his whiskers in a bunch,
And wears his glasses on his head.
I mustn't call him Old Man Wells--
No matter--that's what Father said.
And when the little blacking smells
And camphor balls and soap begin,
I do not have to look to know
That Mr. Wells is coming in.
Mr. Pennybaker at Church
He holds his songbook very low,
And then he stretches down his face,
And Mother said, "You mustn't watch,
He's only singing bass."
He makes his voice go walking down,
Or else he hurries twice as fast
As all the rest, but even then
He finishes the song the last.
And when I see him singing there,
I wonder if he knows it all
About Leviticus and Shem
And Deuteronomy and Saul.
The Pilaster
The church has pieces jutting out
Where corners of the walls begin.
I have one for my little house,
And I can feel myself go in.
I feel myself go in the bricks,
And I can see myself in there.
I'm always waiting all alone,
I'm sitting on a little chair.
And I am sitting very still,
And I am waiting on and on
For something that is never there,
For something that is gone.
Jefferson Howard
My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia:
Hating slavery, but no less war.
I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
With its dominant forces drawn from
New England, Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
With wife and children heavy to carry—
Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige,
And reaping evils I had not sown;
Foe of the church with its charnel dankness,
Friend of the human touch of the tavern;
Tangled with fates all alien to me,
Deserted by hands I called my own.
Nicholas Bindle
Were you not ashamed, fellow citizens,
When my estate was probated and everyone knew
How small a fortune I left?—
You who hounded me in life,
To give, give, give to the churches, to the poor,
To the village!—me who had already given much.
And think you not I did not know
That the pipe-organ, which I gave to the church,
Played its christening songs when Deacon Rhodes,
Who broke and all but ruined me,
Worshipped for the first time after his acquittal?
Lydia Humphrey
Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,
With my Bible under my arm
’Till I was gray and old;
Unwedded, alone in the world,
Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,
And children in the church.
I know they laughed and thought me queer.
I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,
Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,
Disdaining me, not seeing me.
But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.
It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets
Democratized!
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