Poetry for People
Who Don't Read Poetry. Advice for Me
and Maybe You.
Chris Spark
"[Spark] definitely has something going here: the quick take, unexpected turn-arounds, lots of playfulness... delightful in many instances." —Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate
6 x 9 paperback, 155 pages
This Dreaming World
new poems
(selections below)
consecration
the silent
fly moves
from shadow
through a shaft
of sunlight
and in that
moment glows
This Dreaming World
Rain gathers, softens
and spills, while
truck drivers sing
in their lonely cabs
And you,
bending down now
to gather it all
in a mason jar
What if we treated
everything
as extra—
as if our souls
had come to earth
the way
you and I
would go to a fair.
Why I Sit in Grass under
Trees in the Hills
​
Things die out here
and no one cares.
Nor do you get any points
for being heroic.
And yet nothing complains.
If you’re uncomfortable,
shift position.
What things do out here is sing
or listen.
What Is Said
Physics teaches
that everything solid
is really a wave.
We just weren’t made
to notice.
Common sense declares
that’s absurd.
Everything’s normal.
Things are
what they seem.
Jesus and other
mystics whisper, Ask
and it is given—
a vaster world
embraces you.
Which is true?
Is reality
unnatural
natural
or supernatural?
Yes.
Shouting in the Wind
In the gym yesterday
a guy had on
a t-shirt
for some kind of race,
maybe motorcycle,
that said, “No Wimps.”
Ah, I thought,
How we love to feel mighty,
as if making up
for some essential impotence.
I imagined selling shirts
that said,
“We are all wimps
before God.”
And then I prayed
for a more
lucrative idea.