Other Ways: Rescuing the Church from Pharaoh and Other Poems

By Peter Keese

Rich, complex, exciting, confusing, life, death, and beyond--all words to capture a bit of truth about this very rich, complex world inhabited by all kinds of individual particles emerging into flora, fauna, animals of all kinds, including humans who together make up a unity. This book is my attempt to celebrate the unity and the diversity. Poetry hints of an openness to complexity while certainty tends to become restrictive dogma. Other Ways means to hint that full meaning, complete certainty, is beyond any human capacity ever to establish. Poetry intends to celebrate the richness that is to be enjoyed even though never fully comprehended.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385212460

Peter Keese

Peter Keese, ThM, is a retired Episcopal priest and an actively retired supervisor certified by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education. He served fifteen years at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, and fifteen years as Director of Clinical Pastoral Education at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, TN. He has also served as a Pastoral Counselor with the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. He and his wife live in Knoxville, TN.

Book preview

OTHER WAYS

Rescuing the Church from Pharoah
and Other Poems

by Peter Keese

OTHER WAYS

Rescuing the Church from Pharoah and Other Poems

Copyright ©

2024

Peter Keese. 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,

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Resource Publications

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paperback isbn: 979-8-3852-1244-6

hardcover isbn: 979-8-3852-1245-3

ebook isbn: 979-8-3852-1246-0

version number 020824

Table of Contents

Title Page

Trees

Dead and Alive

A Letter to Mother Church

Tears

Ode to St. Augustine

Occam’s Razor

Keeping Score*1

Tell Old Pharaoh

Jesus Was a Healthy Boy

Sin

Jerusalem Jerusalem

The Church’s Prayer

With Apologies to Emily

What We Have Here is a Failure to Imagine

Executioner’s Lament

Innocent

Alan*5

Let it Be

The Commandment

A Sea of Ignorance

Don’t Ask

Serious

At the Beach

Graced

I Almost Missed It

Wedding

Meditation

Vladimir

OTOH

Words Play

WAR

Gratitude

Kind

A Dream

Anthony Dominick Benedetto Died Today

My Creed

The Angriest Man in Brooklyn

Genius

Ism

The garden

Grits

Prevenient

Weather

Naked Greed

The Struggle

The Buddha Paradox

Similar

The Super Blue Moon

The Secret

Quantum Physics

Fall Haiku

Nakedness Revisited

Shawn

The Heaven I Don’t Believe In

Quantum Philosophy

East and West

He and She

Dumbass

Peace

Connection

The Dog that Did Not Bark

Poetry

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way

Fish

Mortal

Life

Gift

The Horror

Mink

Three Red Tomatoes

TS Eliot Revisited

Meeting

How it All Started

How It Ends

Trees

It is a normal event, I guess

the chlorophyll in recess

our green once vibrant and bright

fades now into the night

we belonged—a community

with common purpose

and a common language

we were attached

leaf to branch

branch to limb

limb to trunk

we were alive

we danced together

in the wind

and suffered together

in the rain and cold

we belonged to one another

green alive connected

so is our time now past?

our life fading fast?

we’ve been dropped off

disconnected

the young ones yet attached

mistake our grounded condition

for death—for nonbeing

we commiserate

amongst ourselves

and seek to demonstrate

that we are yet

somebody

fallen leaves rich compost,

soil enhanced trees healthy

life not lost

perhaps more wealthy

we enrich the roots

Dead and Alive

I’ve been lying here

for many years

people think I’m dead