And calls out, protests, screams.

← v21n2, Fall 2022

—Do you still have the notebook where

You kept a list of future saints who

Repented their denials, since you’ve

Often wondered who will answer, after all,

The call, after being thrice-asked?

—What word have you found that can be

Shouted the loudest, belief or disbelief,

Belief or unbelief, belief or misbelief,

Who can deny the winds their change of

Direction, who stands there to witness?

—You weren’t the only one in line at the lost

And found and lost again counter, plenty of us,

Most of us suspending our credence in order

To understand the ecstatic, pain’s gone,

Fear’s gone, and all that is left is the future.

religion language faith

Edward Mayes

Edward Mayes is the author of five books of poetry including Works and Days (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), winner of the Associated Writing Programs Prize for Poetry, and First Language (University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), winner of the Juniper Prize. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review , The Best American Poetry , The Gettysburg Review , Harvard Review , The Kenyon Review , The Massachusetts Review , The New Yorker , The Southern Review , and Poetry , among others. He is also the coauthor, with his wife Frances Mayes, of three books about Tuscany: In Tuscany (Broadway Books, 2000), Bringing Tuscany Home (Broadway Books, 2004), and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2012). Mayes is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and both the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award and the Gordon Barber Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He previously served as the director of the creative writing program at Santa Clara University. He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and Cortona, Italy. Photo by Steven Rothfeld