Current Work - Lilith
A reimagining of a George MacDonald Masterpiece
A work in progress from The Inherited Story
An inherited figure has accumulated many lives. This poem begins by asking what has actually been received: which stories, which texts, which later memories—and what must remain difficult when they are sung again.
Fourfold Flame
Four Epic Ballad Quests through the Holy Gospels
Four Gospels. Four roads. One flame.
The Fourfold Flame carries the witness of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into four distinct epic ballad quests, allowing each Gospel to keep its own voice, movement, imagery, and vision of Christ.
Matthew walks the road of the hidden King.
Mark follows the Servant who goes before.
Luke opens the widening road and table of mercy.
John journeys through light, sign, wound, and witness.
Written in rhythmic, rhyming staves meant to be heard as well as read, these four poetic journeys move through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ toward betrayal, cross, tomb, resurrection, and sending. Along the way, familiar Gospel images return and deepen: road and river, mountain and field, bread and cup, storm and table, stone and garden, darkness and dawn.
This is not a replacement for the Gospels, nor an attempt to flatten four witnesses into one story. It is an invitation to walk beside them—to hear familiar Scripture through image, cadence, refrain, and sacred story, and then return to the biblical text with a more attentive ear.
Read The Fourfold Flame straight through as one sweeping pilgrimage, Gospel by Gospel, devotionally one stave at a time, or aloud in worship, study, retreat, and community.
For readers drawn to Christian poetry, the Holy Gospels, biblical imagination, theological poetry, sacred storytelling, and the life of Jesus Christ, The Fourfold Flame offers an ancient witness in a form shaped to be spoken, remembered, and carried.
Four roads are sung. One Lord is known. The lamp becomes the flame.
Exert from the Book
Stave 1 — The Names Before the Dawn
Biblical Source: Matthew 1:1–17
Before the child, the names went forth,
a road of dust and flame;
from tent to throne, from wound to womb,
they carried more than name.
A father spoke, a mother bore,
a field received the seed;
the old earth learned the ache of hope,
the heart’s ancestral need.
Through famine-road and stranger’s gate,
through scarlet thread and grain,
through hidden women, foreign fields,
through mercy mixed with pain,
the lamp went on from hand to hand,
though wind and empire came;
the wick was small, the night was long,
yet still it kept its flame.
From shepherd-harp to palace-stone,
from crown to broken wall,
from exile’s bitter riverbank
where silent shadows fall,
the promise walked in captive feet,
the king-line bent and worn;
the cedar dreamed of Bethlehem,
the root beneath the thorn.
Not every name was bright with praise,
not every hand was clean;
yet grace moved under dust and loss,
unmastered and unseen.
The road remembered Abraham,
the road remembered kings;
the road remembered Babylon
and all its iron rings.
Fourteen, and fourteen, fourteen more,
the measured footsteps came;
not numbers only, but a drum
beneath the waiting name.
The lamp was passed through grief and wrong,
through bone, through blood, through breath;
the promise did not flee the dust,
nor bargain free of death.
And when the last dim hand had held
the ember, worn and slight,
a house in Nazareth kept watch
beside the edge of night.
Reviews -
“This is incredible, beautifully engaging! I can imagine sitting around a campfire listening to someone recite this like an ancient story. As someone who can struggle feeling comfortable picking up a Bible, I see a retelling like this so important. I think poetry can also communicate deeper truths beneath the words and add some much needed life.”
- Anonymous