Author: Ian Trimnell

Good evening Living Stones. Janet and I first met when we were students in Coventry and she gave me a book of Helen Steiner Rice poems. I used one of those poems last night and here’s another one, suggested by Janet, which seems to fit in well with today’s anniversary of the announcement of the first...

Today, Tuesday 23 March – it is now one year since the PM announced news of the first lockdown. Let us reflect on the transformation of our lives into a life of servitude and love. Psalm 19: 1-6 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day...

Just close your Eyes     and open your heart And feel your worries     and cares depart, Just yield yourself     to the Father above And let him hold you     secure in his love – For life on earth     grows more involved With endless problems     that can’t...

The Prayer of Saint Patrick I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through a belief in the Threeness, Through confession of the Oneness Of the Creator of creation. I arise today Through the strength of Christ’s birth and His baptism, Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial, Through the...

Ashes to Ashes By Tias Little I am on my back, now At the end of a long and circuitous march Down hallways, into rooms and kitchens. I’m done building, raising up, tearing down I’m done trying to get from A to B No straight lines, geometry or form The architecture of me vanished. It’s difficult...

Spring By Mary Oliver Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only...

Pantoum for Postpartum By Brittany Rogers I birth a child, and the wet wound never closes. My mother diagnoses postpartum casuallyas if saying — mail is here, and your name is on it. Explains the drilling is nothing I asked for, overripe nerves happen sometimes. My mother announces my postpartum casually, says in her day, black...

My favorite time is in time’s other side By Etel Adnan My favorite time is in time’s other side, its other identity, the kind that collapses and sometimes reappears, and sometimes doesn’t. The one that looks like marshmallows, pomegranates, and stranger things, before returning to its kind of abstraction. I used to be fond of time...

Soulwork by Tracy K. Smith One’s is to feed. One’s is to cleave. One’s to be doubled over under greed. One’s is strife. One’s to be strangled by life. One’s to be called and to rise. One’s to stare fire in the eye. One’s is bondage to pleasure. One’s to be held captive by power. One’s...

A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde   For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at...

Silence by Billy Collins There is the sudden silence of the crowd above a player not moving on the field, and the silence of the orchid. The silence of the falling vase before it strikes the floor, the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child. The stillness of the cup and the...

Today by Billy Collins If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick...