One of the best darn lit mags around is Ruminate Magazine. They make a great visually stunning product with high-quality, accessible, and engaging literature. And here at Antler, we’re really excited about our collaborations with them, which we hope will be many!

This year at the Festival of Faith and Writing, we’ll be teaming up with Ruminate to present an excellent lunch event called “Cultivating Play and Mystery: A Discussion and Time of Practice with Scott Cairns, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, and Walter Wangerin, Jr.”

Recently, Ruminate released their 22^nd issue, in which they published some of my work. I thought I’d share the poem they published and encourage you to get familiar with their projects, prizes, and authors before you hit their booth at F&W2012!

Hope you like the following which was written for my friend JD Walt. Feel free to leave a comment or reflection about the poem, Ruminate’s awesomeness, or the Festival—past or present…

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TO MARK THE PLACE

by Dave Harrity

Remember that I said this:
maybe the day is just beginning
where belief would end.

Looking back, how would you define it now?
A life revealed in clarity of morning prayer:
scape of dawn, stars receding in thin cloud,
the body bent—request or resignation?

Even if you don’t, stars understand.
Lights arriving because their bodies
are already gone—graves always give way to glory.
As if the dark stones over their violet tombs
have rolled back and it’s now enough
to make you see what small faith you had before.

Isn’t this your devotion?
Place your hand in your pocket
when asked to give.
Give whatever it is you find there.

And if you should pull a dusty seed
place it in the earth.
Forget it came from you.
Never let your left hand know.

So that years from now, following home
those tiny lights some long road back to this place,
you might be surprised to see
your accidental gift revising the horizon—
small green proof that we were here,
that we once crossed this road together.

No record of denials set down;
no crowing uncertainties about it.
And what you once thought anathema
turned into the kindness of incantation.

Maybe what I said before was wrong:
the day is actually ending
where this world will not believe.