Skip to content →

Category: Religion

POEM: A Journey Of 1,000 Miles

Published 23 August 2023 by Jason Crane

A Journey Of 1,000 Miles

My first guest was a nun.
I hadn’t talked to one
since the second grade.
It was for a 5-minute feature
on people doing good work
in Rochester, New York.
I was in a studio, she
was on the phone.
As soon it was over,
I pressed a button
and erased the whole thing.
I broke out in a sweat.
Took a few deep breaths.
Then I called her back
and asked if she’d do it again.
Sure, she said, I think
I can do it better anyway.

/ / /

23 August 2023
Charlottesville NY

This is poem 33 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Leave a Comment

POEM: Chasing Answers To Questions Unknown

Published 23 August 2023 by Jason Crane

Chasing Answers To Questions Unknown

From the moment Father Edgar walked into the room,
I knew I wanted to be a monk.

When we changed teams, moving across the street
to the Methodists, I decided to become a minister instead.

At 15, newly into prog rock and Depeche Mode,
I discovered it was possible to not believe in God.

I flew 10,000 miles to clap hands and bow,
to ring bells and make mochi and stare up at statues.

For Christmas in 1997, Jen bought me a book
about the Lotus Sutra. It was over my head.

Three years later I was in our spare room, incense
burning on the credenza, legs folded, hands in a mudra.

Over the next two decades I went back to the cushion
time after time, trying to quiet the monkeys.

Eventually I threw in the towel, but somebody threw it back.
After all, a frood has to know where their towel is.

/ / /

22 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

Thanks to S for the title.

This is poem 32 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Leave a Comment

POEM: Sanctuary

Published 2 August 2023 by Jason Crane

Sanctuary

The interior of the church is dimly lit.
It’s a weekday afternoon, so the building
is empty, except for two people.
One is a teenage boy.
He has glasses too big for his face,
and the same haircut he’s had since he was five.
He’s wearing clothes chosen by his mother.
The other person is an older woman.
Honestly, she’s probably in her forties,
but that’s old to him.
He is crying.
In those days it was hard for him to cry.
Not because he didn’t have reason.
She has one arm around his shoulders,
there in the front pew.
The sanctuary smells faintly of incense,
a scent that never truly leaves.
Sanctuary. In earlier days the door of a church
was a shield from persecution.
The boy isn’t running from the law, though.
He’s trying to come to grips with abuse
and undiagnosed depression and a total lack
of any means of escape.
Beyond the heavy door is the heavier town.
He asked to be sent away to boarding school,
but his parents said no.
There’s nothing she can do, really,
but tell him it’ll be okay.
She’s wrong, but at least she says it.

/ / /

1 August 2023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 11 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.

Leave a Comment

POEM: Meeting

Published 9 April 2023 by Jason Crane

Meeting

How odd to sit silently
contemplating the infinite
or making a grocery list
or wondering how
everything that
happened happened,
waiting for the voice
of an unlikely god
or the soft clearing
of an elderly throat,
until a man across the room
asks if there are any
announcements, then says
it’s time to rise.

/ / /

9 April 2023
Charlottesville VA

Leave a Comment

POEM: Margaret

Published 5 January 2023 by Jason Crane

Margaret

I’ve looked and looked,
opening heavy doors,
stepping into dim chapels.

I’ve lit candles,
knees pressed into velvet,
eyes raised to painted clouds.

I’ve sung along to melodies
familiar and new,
sat for hours in stillness,

waiting for the voice
to come
or to go.

I’ve felt a tingle in my chest,
a tear on my cheek,
the hard pew against my back.

I’ve read the words
and heard them read
searching for someone

to whom I can
address these lines.

Yet again I speak the question
into existence.

Yet again I listen
for the answer.

/ / /

5 January 2023
Lemont, PA

One Comment

POEM: Catechesis

Published 10 April 2022 by Jason Crane

Catechesis

Tomorrow
is Palm Sunday,
the day when
Jesus
famously
slapped some skin
with his
disciples,
or something
like that;
it’s been
a while
since I
read the book.

/ / /

9 April 2022
Latham NY

(NaPoWriMo Day 9)

One Comment

POEM: still small

Published 19 November 2021 by Jason Crane

still small

at midday I crunched across the cereal bowl
     floor of the forest
never out of hearing of the lunch-grabbers with
     their gas pedals and squeaky brakes
in the afternoon I drifted popeward in the
     sanctuary of a Carmelite monastery
still unable to escape the commuters with their
     combustions and their hybrid choirs
how am I supposed to hear the still small voice
     when everything around me is exploding

/ / /

17 November 2021
Perinton NY

Leave a Comment

haiku: 20 June 2021

Published 20 June 2021 by Jason Crane

deep in the forest
the Quaker meeting house sits
waiting for silence

/ / /

20 June 2021
Plainfield VT

Leave a Comment

POEM: The still small voice

Published 3 April 2020 by Jason Crane

The still small voice
(for Fr. Edgar Holden)

A lotus tattoo & a statue of the Buddha;
I turn halfway to look down the road behind me.
Flinching from the name of God like a slapped child,
I yearn for the gentle mysticism of Merton,
for a life among flagstones & evensong.
There are burrs on my clothing & scratches on my skin
from running through fields to evade my pursuers.
At night I hear the still small voice:
“How’re you going to make your way in the world
when you weren’t cut out for working?”
Twenty years ago I took a monk to a quiet spot
in the Sonoran Desert, left him there with his brothers
to bathe in the sunset & silence. I drove back to town
wondering whether I should have stayed there with them.

/ / /

Jason Crane
2 April 2020
Tucson, AZ

Note: The two lines in quotation marks are from Warren Zevon’s song “The French Inhaler.”

Leave a Comment

POEM: The Lord’s Prayer (Revised)

Published 27 March 2020 by Jason Crane

The Lord’s Prayer (Revised)

Our Father, who art in heaven,
are you there or not?
Thy kingdom has seen better days,
& if this is thy will then you’ve got
some ‘splaining to do, Lucy.
Give us a break, wouldja?
A bunch of old gray suits are trying
to steal our daily bread.
Maybe we can’t live by bread alone,
but without it we’re toast, if you’ll
forgive the pun. Also forgive us
our trespasses & our shoplifting
& our “missed” rent payments.
Lead us not into temptation, for we are
sorely tempted to string up these motherf—
excuse me, Lord, bad guys.
For thine is the kingdom & the power &
the glory & whatnot, but we might need
to take matters into our own hands for a while.
Amen.

/ / /

Jason Crane
27 March 2020
Tucson, AZ

Leave a Comment