My Barefoot Rank

By David Craig

Though we are all sorry sinners, not worthy to sing God's praises, we must. The trick is to not let concerns for "Christian stealth" transform us into poets who end up serving a second master. "Platform" has its draw, but we can't let a wide concern for Catholic culture become no culture at all. We can't be so concerned with success that our poems lose their distinguishing content.
Jesus is Lord of all the earth.
Using a conversational style lifted from Collins and Coleridge, these poems seek to bring a world to light where He has always been alive and active, where he reigns in complete power, worthy of all our praise.
May He forgive us all our sins and change us in the twinkling of His eye before our journey ends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Sep 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532633171

David Craig

Aside from three months living on an oil tanker sailing back and forth between America and Africa, and two years living in a pub, David Craig grew up on the west coast of Scotland. He studied Software Engineering at university, but lost interest in the subject after (and admittedly prior to) graduation. He currently works as a workforce planning analyst for a public service contact centre, and lives near Glasgow with his wife, daughter and dog.

Book preview

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My Barefoot Rank

David Craig

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My Barefoot Rank

Copyright © 2017 David Craig. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3316-4

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3318-8

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3317-1

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

"Francis was so small

We are cars on golden blocks

Fall is here before the leaves know it

It’s a thin hand

Silence is old, it’s Scandinavian

The notes on my wife’s piano pages

Jesuit high get-together

We’d stopped at an alligator farm

Linda says their red eyes are purely ornamental

The 17 year cicadas are out

Dishes in the sink, many times

The Hand that opens flowers

The size of the church always got me

October is the pumpkin’s friend

Old people are brave

Aren’t you glad someone invented baseball

The speed with which the old

We are not worthy, worms

It’s a potter’s shed, this poetry place

Mary had a donkey

Why this attraction to old

The bronze soldiers of winter

This cold moon allows for no

Lawrence Welk’s Gail and Dale sing

Dark snow, night fields

"It’s not about cleverness. It’s about life—

Landscape with Cattle by Philipp Peter Roos

Heaven is a large bird bath

In heaven the lemonade stands will be better

This is how it always starts

If I ran things

Everything was Calvinist yesterday

I want to meet Jesus

Working for mission wages

Not long off the boat

Your ship is not going to come in

The back winter roads in West Virginia

It snowed again last night

Where can we go this morning

The wrong people keep running things

Southwell’s Burning Babe

Vased twigs spiral upward

Alberta, you were still teaching us

Notes

"Francis was so small

it was almost like you could hold him

in your hand; all of them—they seemed

to act out their own stories, playing themselves:

feeding the hungry, covering the sick.

But for whose benefit, that’s

what I want to know? And who

were the grown ups here anyway?

How were we supposed to take this?

And the crèche,