Posts by John Blase
Dear Winn – 5 June 2017
Dear Winn, Thank you for your letter. I miss you too, my friend, and yes, until then, letters will have to do. We’re gradually settling into a summer rhythm here, which is like past summers and is also unlike past summers. Each season’s a little different, huh? Will and Sarah are home from college. They’re both…
Read MoreLove Poem No.26
The lilacs should have been pruned back last summer, but I forgot. Did you? You didn’t say anything which is odd because you’re smart and usually say things like “We should prune the lilacs” (which means me). Oh. But I remember now. Last June you fell and broke yourself in pieces. Pruning was the…
Read MoreA little compensation
Things have been a bit quiet here lately. That fault is entirely my own. I put together and self-published a poetry collection – The Jubilee – and so my attention has been focused there. Plus life has been rather busy this spring and, well, let’s just say its been busy. A few of you have…
Read MoreDear Winn – 28 February 2017
Dear Winn: Well, tomorrow’s Wednesday, the first day of March. And also Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. I think I’ve told you before that as a young Baptist boy the only lint I knew was what I pulled out of the dryer vent a couple of times a week. I’m quite sure I…
Read MoreDear Winn -13 February 2017
Dear Winn: Its been a while, huh? Its not that I haven’t wanted to write, because I have. Its more that, as the psalmist says, “I have come into deep waters.” Where I am in my season of life, a handful of disappointments, and the current state of our nation have ganged up on me…
Read MoreNo Room
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock Big America, Big America, let me come in. No. We are not blind. You might be a wolf in the only clothes on your back sent to swallow us whole. Please. I no longer have a place to lay my heart.…
Read MoreBefore The World Wakes
In the first light when birds stir I begin a poem in praise of myself. Their singing provides extra bravado which is quite necessary to tell of how it is to be sweetly alive. This morning its an aria, some stubborn solo voice down by Dirty Woman Creek refusing to be a team player. He(?)…
Read MoreLike Always
This is my body bones brittler than a decade ago eyes dependent to glass distances middle thickening against my please mind content to mine yesterdays. But my heart still breaks then mends breaks then mends like always.
Read MoreI AM RESOLVED
I’ve zero interest in being a red letter christian or a common good christian or whatever other bastardization some feel crucial to crossfit the old faith, tone it hard for our dark new world. If the over articulate is the enemy of the erotic could this not also threaten the desired agapic? No, call me…
Read MoreChristmas Day Meditation, 2016
As long as we’ve been a part of our local Lutheran congregation, a fundamental facet of our Christmas Eve service has always been communion. Always. And it was again last night. For almost forty-five minutes we were swept up in the drama of the birth of Christ via words and imagery and song, and then…
Read More