BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
\nI wonder if suicides aren’t in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life. V\u00e1clav Havel<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Are there any real questions
\nto be asked anymore?<\/p>\n
Like the one you asked
\nwhen we walked<\/p>\n
among blue spruce mountains
\nand saw a yellow butterfly<\/p>\n
stumbling over the cattails
\nalong the river.<\/p>\n
Why does water sometimes pause
\nand seem to run against itself before going on?<\/p>\n
Lord knows, we need
\nthe light in these loyal mountains.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t forget the night
\nyou placed your hands on the back of my head.<\/p>\n
I had my face in my arms but
\nI heard the absolute heaven
\nsaying do not be afraid.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Shann Ray<\/a> is a poet and prose writer whose work has appeared in Best New Poets, McSweeney\u2019s,<\/em> and Poetry International.<\/em> A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he is the winner of the Breadloaf Writers\u2019 Conference Bakeless Prize, the Subterrain Poetry Prize, and the Crab Creek Review Fiction Award. He is the author of American Masculine<\/em> <\/a>(Graywolf), and Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity<\/a><\/em> (Rowman & Littlefield). He lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH I wonder if suicides aren’t in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life. V\u00e1clav Havel Are there any real questions to be asked anymore? Like the one you asked when we walked among blue … Continue reading