The Earth Moves at Midnight and Other Poems

64 original poems address Scripture, Franciscan life, and the spirituality of place. An experience of earthquakes, real and metaphorical. from Afterword

This new collection of poems by Murray Bodo offers an unusual and rewarding glimpse of the inner life of the poet-priest. Bodo describes the book as a self-contained experience, bound by the death of his mother in the opening section and the death of his father some years later in the closing section of poems, an experience peopled with Jesus and the saints. Here are memories of his parents and his New Mexico childhood, of the people and experiences that shaped him along his journey. Here are illuminating images and insights expressed in a language both plain and accessible. Here is a fresh look at the everyday . . .

Now
speeding, I can t race ahead of driving alone.
from Driving Home

. . . and a fresh look at the most complicated aspects of our nature.

up the mountain
soul becomes when you try
to move it into the sea,

move it or climb it or enter
its narrow cleft that widens
through cool adobe tunnels
into a crystal cave,
an interior castle.
from Teresa of Avila