Katie Boord

POETRY

Charcoal Fire

Tell me, Peter, how it felt
Those words, hasty and bitter, still burning your tongue
Buried in shame’s dark ash
The stuff of life-soaked death
More familiar to you than your dearest friend

To crawl from waves you once walked on
Turned to despairing tears
To a beach that reeked of fish
With sand under your fingernails
To collapse at the feet of truth Himself.

He lit your shame into sorrow
And gathered your meager offerings in both hands
Spread them carefully over embers
That warmed your face as you turned it from Him
And, smiling, He cooked you breakfast.

Camping in Cheyenne Bottoms

In the sleeping I find the waking
In the waking, the sleeping.
Wind buffets my tent
Coyote howls shatter the darkness
I hear it, but it washes over me and around.
I think of the Creator of these wild things
Of me, tame and sheltered in my tent
I cannot fathom such a force
That breaks and binds all at once
That steers the snow geese in their whirlpools
Thick as their namesake in the air
That brushes my eyes softly closed
With waves of breathing silence.
But now, asleep in a cloud of words
Under a full moon
I am more a part of something.

“Wednesday Night Choir Practice,” read by Katie Boord.

Wednesday Night Choir Practice

There’s a man throwing rocks at the church doors
Dirty shoes, throaty voice murmuring
Pausing only to ask for money.
I say I’m sorry, I don’t have cash
And clutch my sheet music tighter.

Inside, the door locked behind me
The sanctuary is cloaked in breathing shadow
The red lamp the same shade
As the spidery veins in the man’s eyes.
And there, the communion rail
Made of stone much like the ones he’s throwing
But somehow carved into a divine threshold
Rather than trampled underfoot.

Upstairs, in the choir loft
Order comes from chaos
A labor of love ascends like an aroma
And drops back down to earth
With each rock that hits the door.
I say I’m sorry, that note was wrong
And hum the words again.

Muffled muttering and cursing
Not quite drowned out by circled words
And penciled crescendos
All straining towards the veil behind that red lamp
And sinking into the ground beneath
The cold communion rail.

Katie Boord is an emerging poet who grew up in the swamps of Mississippi before moving to the prairie of Kansas. She works in a geology lab by day, and sings in an indie rock band by night. In between, she wanders the outdoors in search of birds and inspiration.

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Image: The Denial of Saint Peter by Hendrick ter Brugghen (1628). Public domain.