The great gray whales are training their young
for the long trek north I watch their majestic rise,
the plunge, and rise again toward storms
and darkened bays where killer whales wait.
And still they dive and blow, spumes lifting.
This balcony overlooks a rocky shore
where a thousand years of surf have carved
sandstone into a gallery of curves and shapes—
a human family leaning into each other,
a mother without arms, her child submerged.
A founding member of the League of Palestinian Artists, Nabil Anani has helped cultivate the contemporary arts movement in the Palestinian territories. His art is rooted in the soil, work, landscapes, architecture, religious identities, suffering, and resistance of Palestinians. It documents not only a people and a landscape but a collective psyche. Each work contains smaller works and worlds within—tiles, words, symbols, and documents of historical significance. In this painting, Holy Family, Anani places a familiar narrative into the realities of suffering and place.
We will pierce him anew
Gouge and scourge
Our churches cloaked
In purple
Again we will spill the blood
And rake his body
In a pause of time
The end will come again
To the march of forty days
Under the cross we go
Split from the snow or frost
Or new raised hyacinth
Down to the tomb we go
Into the gory chamber
In the spike of frankincense
To celebrate his death
It is the nature of a creature—or toy, or movie franchise—to outgrow its context and move on.
(Luke 12:32)
This morning—outdoors, walking—
I count the birds I see:
Clouded late winter sunlight
Discloses only three—
Small, half a block behind me,
Ascending the mid-sky,
Diving, but upward, urgent—
As if to rise or die
In ecstasy, in answer
To what they are and know
Of seasonal transitions
That come too slow, too slow—
As if plummeting toward heaven
Might really hurry spring—
As if the times and seasons
Have been encouraging.
A literary look at the walls that protect us—and keep us captive
How to depict the 12 disciples has long been a perplexing problem for illustrators of the Last Supper. Artistic convention established that Peter should be presented as a curly-haired senior. John was often a beardless youth, leaning against Christ. Judas might be seated at the wrong side of the table, carrying his pouch with thirty pieces of blood money. But the remaining nine have come down to us in centuries of sacred art as a lineup of look-alikes.
Like Nicodemus, Kanye shows that the Spirit blows where it chooses.
On this week's Sunday Morning Matinee, Matt and Adam talk comedy, identity, and Billy Wilder's classic Some Like it Hot.
You point out substantial brick buildings gone to ruin,
angry they’re left to rot when built to last centuries.
Slow down to shake your head at shattered windows,
at plywood nailed over once-grand doorways.
I remind you reclamation companies
may turn those bricks and beams
into something new. No response.