Southwerk Parish

(A picturesque ruin opposite Bacon’s Castle on Route 10)

Across the water and the land
vague stillness lives, as if the flesh
were not here, but bent along
the common fields and unkept houses
that remain: a fuller feeling
in the hearts of us who stay
on the edge where highways and
the sculpted farms give way to
silence and the fallen brickwork.

The past we are, in flourishes
of molecules upon the cells,
makes us both dead and living.
They who lie upon the earth
are us; we tasted on the lea
the salt-tinged victuals they ate,
felt the swell among us move,
and quickened in the act of freedom.

Here upon the land their shapes persist
from folded meadows to the knoll where
stands a lighted house again.
An arch of dreams transmits the present
to the peopled past. Again the
clutter of a rural mind fills
the straightened bricks with simple faith
or faith made in a different soil.
Life awakening the ever dead.

From the present, too, we
bring ourselves to the body.


By David King
The second poem from Virginia Churches, a series of 8 poems on colonial churches.

Copyright 2004 by David King.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry 360 with permission of the author.

Somewhere Between A Dixie Cup and a Big Gulp

Shopped for a bra today
I’d rather shop for shoes
Victoria’s secret is still one
Because I was clueless.
What a bust.

Room spun around
So confused
Miracles, wonders, angels
Flying around my head
Such lust.

Fluff and satin
Boas and lace
Teddies bare
Were in that place.
A real must.

Somewhere between
A Dixie cup
And a big gulp
Can I be on Victoria’s Honor Roll
With a C Plus?

By Phyl Johnson

Copyright 2004 by Phyl Johnson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry 360 with permission of the author.

Merchant’s Hope

I’ve heard they placed a brick up-
on a brick, each act a measure
of their faith and settled mind. At

Merchant’s Hope for us the crumbling
brick and perfect lunette bring to
mind a lighted, purer past,
made simple by the lack of that
we see encumbering our lives.
That it’s a church seems more to show,
in the closers and studied arch,
leaning always eastward, as they
had compasses and hearts to use them,
faith had every day its light,
yellowed perhaps, and on some days
too cold for even firm flesh
to feel, but always on the lintel,
and sang again at dawn and dusk.

Would they change, if given it,
the idea of faith in a simpler flesh
for the impediments of Godless time?
Do these cushions and the central air
make the round of love the less,
belief the more ambiguous,
and every miracle so common?
Or, removed by centuries and
all the busyness in every day,
do we esteem them not real flesh,
forgetting in ourselves their faults,
who shared our bread, had slaves, looked
at a neighbor’s wife with calm intent,
and bastardized the land for gain?

At least we feel all peace is here,
Among the tracing arch and fallow dead.


By David King
A poem from Virginia Churches, a series of 8 poems on colonial churches.

Copyright 2004 by David King.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry 360 with permission of the author.

Moment in September

Quiet silhouettes
creep noiselessly past watching eyes.
Shadows laugh at passer-by’s feet
as wet pavement glistens
under streetlights.
Trees cry at approach of autumn.
Leaves cringe at the impending cold.



By Peter A. Stinson

Copyright 2004 by Peter A. Stinson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry 360 with permission of the author.