Join us as we engage the boundary between sacred and secular through works of poetry and devotionals.
Join us as we engage the boundary between sacred and secular through works of poetry and devotionals.
Older issues are now located under the Archive tab.
I have also given credit for the photographs that appear. For future issues, if you would like to submit a jpeg image with a poem or devotional, I would be glad to receive it.
Thanks to each person who submitted. Your work is important, and it bears a significant testimony of God's work and witness in the world.
See below for a description of the next theme. The submission window opens October 1 and extends through October 15.
--Charles A. Swanson,
Editor
Trunk of a Persimmon Tree; Photo by Charles A. Swanson
Upcoming Themes:
October 1-15, 2026: Invocations, Benedictions, and Other Prayers (Winter Issue)
February 1-15, 2027: Music (Spring Issue)
May 1-15, 2027: Doubt (Summer Issue)
Some Guidance for the Winter “Invocations, Benedictions, and Other Prayers” Submission Call:
The window for the Winter theme of “Invocations, Benedictions, and Other Prayers" opens on October 1 and closes October 15 at midnight. Please note that we will not read poems or devotionals sent before or after that window unless we give you specific permission to send a piece early or late. Read the guidelines carefully and follow them. Keep in mind that we do not accept attachments. See the “Guidelines” tab at the top the Flowers of the Field webpage: Guidelines
I will also consider artwork and photography in a jpeg format. If the art/photo reflects the theme of “Invocations, Benedictions, and Other Prayers,” all the better.
I think this theme the most challenging of any I’ve presented. Not many prayers have proven time-tested and memorable. I think of the Irish Blessing—“May the road rise to meet you . . .”—and the Aaronic blessing—“May the Lord bless you and keep you . . . .” I also think of the hymn we sing at the Lord’s Supper Service in our church as we part—“Blest be the tie that binds, our hearts in Christian love. . . .” Equally as unforgettable is “Aul Lang Syne”—“Should old acquaintance be forgot / and never brought to mind? . . .” You’ll note that these last two examples are blessings set to music, and music serves as a tuning fork for words that echo down through the years.
The task I set before you is to write something that has resonance, immediacy, and power. But isn’t that the goal for almost anything we write—anything that we value ourselves? How often do we succeed? Rarely. Rarely is a depressing word, or is it a challenging word? Rarely shouldn’t keep us from trying.
I sit at my piano and play hymns, and many are old, old sets of words, penned long ago. I am often amazed at how timely they are, how present for me today. As I’ve played through the years, I’ve realized that the composers who wrote these hymns also wrote many more that did not catch the needs of the soul in the same way. They didn’t stand the test of time. For example, Kenneth W. Osbeck in 101 Hymn Stories tells that John Newton and William Cowper collaborated on the “famous Olney Hymns, one of the most important single contributions made to the field of evangelical hymnody” (page 265). The work contains 349 hymns, but only a few of those hymns have lasted, made their way down the long passages of time into our modern hymnbooks. Certainly, one of Newton’s hymns is immensely famous: “Amazing Grace.”
I’m excited to see what you’ll write: what invocation, what benediction, what prayer, or what set of words that could be the foundation of an enduring praise song. I’m excited to think that I might use one of your poems or devotionals in a future worship service! I look forward to how you’ll be inspired, and I am expecting the Muse—John Milton’s Holy Spirit Muse (Invocation, Paradise Lost)—to be the fountain of your inspiration.
Best wishes and happy writing,
Charles A. Swanson
Flowers of the Field, Editor
Old Keys, Tower of London, Photo by Charles A. Swanson
it makes sense why
it’s called that this toy, first
encountered in the nursery for some
or perhaps later in a science lab
it all starts as most things
at rest at rest at rest
then a sudden disruption
the toy has no energy, no battery of its own, it
relies on a disruptor a wind-up and a let-go proxy
setting one into another into the rest
the metal swing-set frame
shivers a little against the table but withstands
the metal balls clacking a sharp percussive knock
that cannot be stopped as one dangling
silver sphere smack smacks into
the next and the next and the next
and isn’t it nearly impossible not to become
invested in watching the pouncing
pendulums ricochet forward, back, forward,
back a little less each time, a little less
until all silvery spheres sit undisturbed
not nearly long enough—always
the lure of the next wind-up, the jostling
of young hands gathered around a lab table
pushing and pushing closer to be the closest, to be
the next to take up an outermost weighted clear wire
and just drop it
Poet’s Notes: "Newton's Cradle" flashed me back to several childhood toys that I remember filling those ambery, long days of childhood and early adolescence. While writing the poem, I was pleased to have several pleasant conversations about the toy and also glad to hear that my friends and family had some good memories associated with the kinetic toy as well. I was also surprised to learn that while I initially remember my much younger self as more of a reader/imaginative-play kid, in reality I also had plenty of kinetic toys where movement played a large role in learning about myself and about the world. I'd like to write more poems about such kinetic objects and toys in the future. It's possible that these poems are an artistic attempt to slow down just a bit the jet engine of too-swiftly-moving years.
About the Poet: Melanie Faith is a poet, writer, educator, editor, photographer, and frequent doodler. Her craft books through Vine Leaves Press offer tips on writing flash fiction, poetry, photography, teaching creative writing, and more. Check out her poetry collection, Does It Look Like Her? (2024), about a forty-something artist, and The Price of Breathing, in which a librarian, a love triangle, and the iron lung all make appearances (Vine Leaves Press, fall 2026). Learn more about Melanie’s classes and creative work at: https://www.melaniedfaith.com/ .
Newton's Cradle. Drawing by Charlie Crawley
Too bad it had to end like this.
Everyone was having so much fun.
It’s hard to know just what we’ll miss
from all our aging in the sun.
Everyone was having so much fun,
dancing to the sound of music
while slowly aging in the sun.
We never thought that we’d get sick
and tired dancing to the sound of music,
holding our partners in our arms.
We never thought that we’d get sick
of feeling how slow rhythm charms.
Holding our partners in our arms
for as long as we could dance
that slower rhythm, we could feel its charms.
The world held magic and romance
for as long as we could dance.
Now it’s hard to know what more we’ll miss
from this world, the magic or romance.
Too bad it had to end like this.
About the Poet: After retiring as curator of historic maps at Princeton University Library, I moved out to Port Townsend, WA, and have traveled widely, preferring remote, natural settings. Since that transition, I’ve published Waypoints (2017), a collection of place poems, Twenty Questions (2019), a chapbook, Delicate Arch (2022), poems and photographs of national parks and monuments, Galápagos (2023), a collaborative chapbook of my son Andrew’s photographs and my poems, Nile (2024), a chapbook of poems and photographs about Egypt, Filing Order: Sonnets (2025), and CATechisms (2025), poems and photographs about my senior cat.
A Birthday Abroad
Paul J. Willis
The man was lost in Italy, where he
had gone to teach a class in poetry—
not lost, exactly, though at times he walked
the country lanes and paused in wonder, balked
by lack of understanding of the way.
His birthday came—his sixty-sixth—a stay.
Except, he did not tell his students this;
to focus on himself would be amiss
he felt, and so he kept his frigid room
and greeted all his family on Zoom.
The day before, at midnight, came a storm
of thunder and of lightning—not the norm
his students told him. Afterward he hiked
to where a butte of tufa lava spiked
the north horizon. On the very top,
a dripping forest spread its verdant mop,
and at its side a quiet chapel grew
as if it were a piece of forest too.
Inside, a spectral silence whispered what
he could not hear: The years! The years! A nut
of hazel rolled across the empty floor.
He stood and watched it, pausing in the door.
And then he fled through many a muddy field,
through crimson vineyards past their sparkling yield
of months ago, the grapes and wine all past,
and living in the lees of life at last.
from Orvieto (© Paul J. Willis, 2025), page 30,
permission to reprint granted by Paul J. Willis and Solum Literary Press, Anaheim, CA. solumpress.com
