The Gloaming Luminescence of Winter
Ardent winter sun persists,
fencing master of light,
parry's clouds, fades
now into pavement dusk, evening
scuttle. If stranded in midtown and
mist-marred street lamps fail,
take this charm, repeat it three times: May we dissolve
limitless in light, flowering. This body,
make of it a song, that it be company with earth,
open—tied with gossamer to hermetic luminescence. In cold winter
heavens know such succor remains, shines through
the gloam. Light us, lead us—home.
Leaving Missoula Again
Thanksgiving 2008
In snow-limned mountains,
peregrinating ghosts of
uncertain dispositions,
children wave,
expanding hearts' walls—
blank space of departure.

Joshua Moses is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he focuses on the relationship between religion and mental health in disaster settings. He is a Ruth L. Kirchstein Fellow with the National Institute of Mental Health, and research director for the New York City Zen Center for Contemplative Care. Joshua's poetry has appeared in Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, among other places. He has written on trauma and disaster, but has recently given up apocalyptic thinking.