"Missing Church Again," by Eric Cruz (Poetry '20)

2020 poetry grad Eric Cruz was recently featured in Zocalo: Public Square. Read an excerpt of Cruz’s poem “Missing Church Again” below:

Today, no song, God, repentance
ringing as words flute up through rafters.

What remains: a bird feeder heavy
with seed, like a soon-to-be

mother swaying. And finches,
cardinals, away from heaven,

as black seeds slide down their throats.
Nothing survives

this world without faith,
without rising out of oneself

into the dream of shared need.
It’s because I’m done kneeling

that I walk beneath the sky’s blue
vein as the pulse of my own

sadness widens there, until at last
it is enough to cut open

a bag of seed and drift. Please grant
me peace of mind and calm

my troubled heart. And what I mean is wings.
I mean singing and for small bodies

to shadow the yard. Funny, I can imagine
them falling through the temple

of silence, early morning burning
orange along the lip of the horizon.

“Missing Church Again,” by Eric Cruz (Poetry ’20)