By: Benjamin Thorne

In Silence (Quaker Worship)

In the silence of the Meeting,
a settled stillness falls;
push aside the sounds of shifts in seating;
heed your leading when it calls.
Sink into that deeper feeling
of solitude and unity,
thresh over those thoughts wheeling
that threaten mutiny.
In that darkest place, there is Inner Light,
a still small voice to answer you
when faith turns from plight;
and as worship closes, you may arise anew.

The Progress of Victory

After the Marne, Aisne, and Ypres,
incognita
death wafts in green
and kills unseen.

The fat generals at the Somme
failed with aplomb,
sipping hot tea–
deaf to our plea.

At the charnel house of Verdun
who truly won?
A bomb’s dread din–
our trench caved in.

My Journal

Bound in simple leather, nondescript,
are handmade pages with rough deckled edge;
between their lines my unkempt thoughts are kept.

Long past when mold becomes my mantle set,
and my form feeds the growing sedge,
even after the wind’s swept up my bones
the words herein will still inhere;
and so, apart from pulse I will exist, in part.

But it’s true import none shall see:
that you once gifted this to me.

Morning Comes Too Soon

When twilight’s last shade kept the day at bay,
I looked with love upon your still face,
and overcome knew not what to say;
when twilight’s last shade kept the day at bay,
I struggled against grief, refusing to give it sway;
and let my eyes linger, lost, so memory would not erase—
when twilight’s last shade kept the day at bay,
I looked with love upon your still face.

Deep Bruising

Days after the taste of your skin left my mouth
and days before our scent, enmeshed in my shorts,
finally gave up its ghost, we joked about your bruise,
flesh embossed with teeth mark initials, how I should
have left a matching pair. Neither of us knew the truth,
that its mate lay carved in my heart; both now obscured
from view: but mine remains, a last memento of you.

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Benjamin Thorne reads and writes poems when he “ought” to be doing any number of other things. His work appears in multiple journals in print and online, and is the recipient of multiple prize nominations. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.