Monday, April 8, 2019

Marie J. Post

Marie J. Post (1919—1990) is a Michigan poet, a graduate of Calvin College, and a former teacher of junior high students. Her poems regularly appeared in The Grand Rapids Post, and in The Banner. A number of her own original hymns appear in the Christian Reformed Church’s Psalter Hymnal.

Her collection, I Had Never Visited an Artist Before and Other Poems (Being Press) appeared in 1973, followed by a book of poems focussing on the Apostle Peter — Sandals, Sails & Saints (1993). Some of her poems were also included in Luci Shaw’s anthology of incarnation poems, A Widening Light — which originally appeared in 1984, and has been reissued by Regent College Press.

Palm Sunday

Astride the colt and claimed as King
that Sunday morning in the spring,
he passed a thornbush flowering red
that one would plait to crown his head.

He passed a vineyard where the wine
was grown for men of royal line
and where the dregs were also brewed
into a gall for Calvary’s rood.

A purple robe was cast his way,
then caught and kept until that day
when, with its use, a trial would be
profaned into a mockery.

His entourage was forced to wait
to let a timber through the gate,
a shaft that all there might have known
would be an altar and a throne.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.