Phases. Mischa Willett

      Phases

      Copyright © 2017 Mischa Willett. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1035-6

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-1037-0

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1036-3

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Willett, Mischa

      Title: Phases / Mischa Willett.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books 2017 | Series: The Poiema Poetry Series.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-1035-6 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-1037-0 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-1036-3 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Christian life—Poetry | Fiction / General | Christian life

      Classification: PS3623.I45 P43 2017 (paperback) | PS3623 (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      The Poiema Poetry Series

      Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won’t twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet’s company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value—to get at something important.

      Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship . . .” poiema in Greek—the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship.

      These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries—through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R. S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov—down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it.

      —D.S. Martin

      Series Editor

      For my gone friends, the poets Jim Simmerman (1952–2006) and Brett Foster (1973–2015)

      Pastoral

      Let us not overlook, he says looking out over

      us from the lectern like a shepherd

      with a crook of words bent on folding

      us back into our pen, or penning

      us back to our fold, the stupidity

      and defenselessness of sheep.

      We bleat: in this analogy, who

      are we? He proceeds. Goats, you

      see, can handle themselves. Horns

      and hoofs, cranial helmets they ram

      full tilt into posts, or other goats. But sheep

      mind you, sheep have no homing device,

      which is why stories begin with a lost one;

      they’re even known to head toward danger

      —oh look, a wolf! Let’s check it out!— in dumb

      allegiance to the interesting, which I find

      interesting, and think: how to amend

      our sheepish ways? But he, to drive

      home both the point and oh ye,

      sighs it’s beyond you; beyond me.

      When the 26 African Queens Escaped

      And mated with local bees

      they created a masterpiece

      of evolutionary advantage and a menace

      to the whole talon hook by which

      South America dangles from the north.

      Apis mellifera adansonii, or

      “our fury will visit like a storm”

      belligerated in response to the Rhodesian

      stone age that hustled them from hives

      torchwise, a stinging insult

      to the migrants, who would’ve left

      in season. Captured and shipped

      to Brazil to—what else?—increase production,

      they flourished more as flame

      than flower, and now, take down deer,

      children, the odd cow, their vengeance ichor,

      anger power.

      I Was Cold and You Lit Me on Fire

      When I was Hungary, you bled

      me. I leaned my long hair out

      the window and you climbed it.

      Blessed are you who, when I

      was a stone, made a slingshot,

      who slew the dragon

      I was stuck behind.

      Those gathered said, Word,

      when were you wine and we spilled

      you? When a penny we spent?

      He replied, do you remember

      the time I was in the desert

      and you were a date tree? When

      we slid the merman back over

      the bow? Surely, I tell you now,

      whenever you have hewn

      a forest of weak trees,

      whenever outfoxed a sphinx,

      whenever walked on a pond

      that’s frozen there you have

      stood on the sea.

      The people were amazed.

      And sore. And afraid.

      The Help

      Since the angel offered

      the bowl of holy

      water like a tray of sweet-

      meats at a cocktail gathering

      she was—ahem—hosting,

      I took one, by which I mean some,

      like chestnuts were a-roasting

      and it was Christmas, which,

      in