May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
As for idols, they are impotent. Not
one can see or speak or feel
a neighbor’s ache—her dog dead
and child missing below the levee. I read
headlines and feel more
than all the idols that there ever were.
Even the idol that is our idea
of God is impotent—B is not A—
yet God does what he pleases,
the earth what is true to its nature.
We build cities and pay scant attention
to either, then cry foul when the dam breaks.
Idols cannot save, nor theologies.
Only God, and that is no great comfort.
About the Author
Brad Davis
Brad Davis teaches at the College of the Holy Cross (MA), edits Broken Bridge Review, and directs a summer arts program for high school students at Pomfret School (CT), a boarding school where he lives with his wife of 33 years. His poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Paris Review, Image, Ascent, Puerto del Sol, and Connecticut Review. He has won an AWP Intro Journal Award and the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. His fourth poetry book, No Vile Thing, will be out with Antrim House early in 2008.
Susan Lilley
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend reflects on Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God,” a seminal piece on Weil’s understandings of grace, affliction, and our “sacred longing” for God.