Authors /
Sydney Lea
Sydney Lea, a former Pulitzer finalist, was awarded Vermont’s Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2021.
A Dream of Suffering
. . . in such strengthOf usurpation, when the light of senseGoes out, but with a flash that has revealed...
February 13, 2023
Shabbos goy
The early palaver of nestling crows
Outside my window in the white pine tree
Calls back a childhood in which such ruckus
Seemed prelude to possibility....
July 17, 2020
Junior scholar
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.
—Matt. 25:40–45...
May 9, 2019
Through a window
I read a poem each Sunday Our pastor calls this Ministryof Verse I try to find a poem not just she but anyone...
April 1, 2015
Gone to grace
Before Malcolm’s funeral got started,I stood talking with John the blacksmith, who told meHe’d been spending some pretty hard hoursWith a pair of two-year-old Friesian mares...
September 17, 2013
The pastor
I have just one person left on earth who’s beenMy friend through grade school, high school, church, and sports,
The pastor says. Meanwhile the winter rain...
June 27, 2012
Transfigurations
—Bow River, Alberta
The rowdy gulls—derisive creatures,their yammer an instantaneous flash point of angerfor you. Escaped, your mammoth trout, for which...
November 8, 2011
Eye on the sparrow
—for Bruce RichardsTiny, almost an anti-weight,if it blew off my palm in the wind I might not even notice....
May 17, 2010
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Dispute with Thomas Hardy
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have the strength to die....
May 19, 2008
Seeing the Word
Isaiah saw the Word?I look up from Writ and am at first just—interested.How to see something spoken?And yet one needs to think,...
May 1, 2006
Barnet Knoll Brook
—in a time of warHere’s what’s to be read, or part of it,in mud by the brook after last night’s storm—storm that scrawled itself on sky...
November 1, 2004