Tim Gavin

Divine Property: An Altar

Down the gangplank,

into mud still

holding its memory of flood—

a rock, heat-scoured and smooth,

sits in a bed of silt,

older than water, younger than your voice.

A pigeon shifts its wings,

half-light catching the arc—

I follow,

stone in hand,

an altar rising between breaths.

The psalms somewhere in me,

turn over and over

until they silence themselves—

a whisper waiting to be met.

Under your night—

star-sharp, distance, a weight I’ve carried—

I break the bread,

pour the wine,

as if to fill what can’t be filled.

But the crumb is enough.

The sip, too.

Your name,

caught between my tongue and the dark,

a thread refusing to fray.

Divine property: apple seeds

A hurricane, ocean-escorted from West Africa,

Swept away chunks of coast, a graceful stand

of pines torn down, leaving a muddy gash—

scarring the land. In the backyard, a child snacks

on an apple while his father, at the barnwood table,

blows life into a flame, surveying the ruin,

looking for some hint of rebirth. The child,

fingers sticky, picks seeds from the heart

of the apple, carries them in his palm

to his father, who mends a hem in silence.

He invites him, the seeds in his hand—

and together they walk to the gash in the earth,

fingers working as a plough,

placing each seed, far enough to grow,

close enough where life could become more.

Divine Property: crumbs

Here I am with the birds, they perch—I am watching them—

on the top of the chapel, at the foot of the cross,

a hundred years of mourning and they’ve stayed,

murmuring something of God—

they’re saying something every day,

and I can hear them, mysteriously,

they brood and repeat and brood and repeat—

and the crumbs, the crumbs fall from a nailed hand,

they know the taste better than I do.

And I wonder. I wonder if they ever think

about the hills, the brutish ones,

The ones watching all this time,

as crumbs fall down,

fall from the Bread of Life,

torn apart and hanging there,

nailed and thorned and flogged,

stripped of dignity and hanging still,

still and silent as if in a sanctuary and

hanging still among rogues and thieves,

and the people lined on the avenue jeer—

yes, jeer, and cheer death like a lottery,

like it’s something they’ve been waiting for,

something they could eat and take home

like lamb chops wrapped in butcher’s paper

and the way they gaze at him waiting

for a miracle to unfold like a sheet,

and then—yes, then,

a man, an official, steps forward

and stabs, yes, stabs with the spear,

like it was his duty to steal the last breath away.

And the blood and water—I don’t know,

maybe I’m just too close—

but the blood and water run down,

they run into the dirt and on the people,

the ones who are standing there like they didn’t know,

and the birds—oh yes, the birds—they know,

they pick at the crumbs, always picking

and flying away, as if they know

how to transcend and leave this behind,

this whole thing, this butchery,

and soar to some other place—

how did they learn that?—to emerge

with crumbs in their beaks,

accepting the grace we refused.

Tim Gavin is an Episcopal priest, serving as the Head Chaplain of The Episcopal Academy. In addition to his most recent publication, A Radical Beginning (Olympia Publishers, 2023), he is the author of Lyrics from the Central Plateau, a book of poems released by Prolific Press in  November 2018. His articles, essays, and poems have appeared in The Anglican Theological Review, Barrow Street Review, Blue Heron Review, Blue Mountain Review, Cape Rock, Chiron Review, The Cresset, Grow Christians, Digital Papercut, Evening Street Review, Library Journal, Magma, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry South, Poetry Super Highway, and Spectrum. He lives with his wife, Joyce, in Newtown Square.