By: KPB Stevens
Leaves as shards of light
and a breeze blows across the park,
and on the river a wide, white birch
dangles its reflection into water.
On the grass a young jogger has stopped to do push-ups,
half-naked, the green lawn flexed around him,
and on the path an old woman, seeing him,
turns to look at two old men, and laughs.
Rejoice!
Rejoice that we are not limited in vision,
that what we see is
whole and fractured and eternal
as the grass.
KPB Stevens is an Episcopal priest, writer, and artist whose work has appeared in Cardinal Sins, Squalorly, Inwood Indiana, Orion Headless, and The Christian Century, as well as two EASE Gallery chap books, Wildernesses: Physical & Spiritual, and Trespasses. His story “My Beam of Light” was selected for The Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2014. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and daughter.
"Last summer I rode my bike to work most days, and would collect little mental vignettes as I rode, noticing things and trying to find words for them, but not caring too much about preserving what I saw or the bits of language that I was piecing together in my mind. I had a sense that the things I saw and the words I used had some kind of eternal value, even if they were never drawn or painted or written down. But when I passed the jogger doing push-ups, and a minute later saw the woman's reaction to him, I braked and pulled my bike up to the nearest bench, and wrote this poem in my sketchbook. It felt comprehensive, somehow, as if that whole summer of riding and observing had found a way to become articulate, and I experienced a little spike of joy because I got to witness and participate in that articulation."