Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Michial FarmerAugust 20, 2021

The half-converted sugar maples stand
Awaiting orders to break into flame.
For now, they are half-glory and half-shame—
And always straining to hear the command.
October looms. The air should be cold steel
Against bare skin. Instead, it’s dense
With sweat and wool held, for now, in suspense,
As the world longs for autumn’s great repeal.
But what’s the hurry? When at last it comes,
It can’t last long. Autumn will fall, I know,
To winter, and, in falling, strip the world
Of this brightness. There’s beauty, too, in snow,
But let’s slow down. Enjoy the final curl
Of heat, before winter straightens the plumb.

The latest from america

Our country is not only in a constitutional crisis; we are in a biblical crisis.
Terence SweeneyMay 21, 2025
A Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, by Father Terrance Klein
Terrance KleinMay 21, 2025
Pope Leo XIV meets with Vice President JD Vance after the formal inauguration of his pontificate at the Vatican on May 18. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo I helped to ensure that Catholicism would outlast the Roman Empire. His name is a reminder that our faith rises above contemporary politics and temporal authority.
The Gospel parable of the “wasteful sower” who casts seeds on fertile soil as well as on a rocky path “is an image of the way God loves us,” Pope Leo XIV told 40,000 visitors and pilgrims at his first weekly general audience.
Cindy Wooden May 21, 2025