By NATHAN JOWERS

Now winter distributes cold lungs under bows of wind, the reddish haze of Abilene’s sky spread by streetlamps that pin the seams of our poorly wrapped city. This poured-out town will roll into wilderness, a pacified lake of civilization between empty sweeps of a blue-norther chill. Waking to daylight, a bright-beaten ruin is level and wide as the road to Hell. West Texas opens in summer to a flat sun spread like fondant on its back. Eminent and vacuous. Thin and featureless. One month and the world flips over: gives and takes. As a dog exposes its warm belly to a wild hand from above, the smoothness of land is married to the rollicking foothills of unpredicted weather. Those temporal billows beneath winsome and divine sweeps of spirit, they lift toward something new, something fresh, something like a sharp breath of always-been.

Nathan Jowers

Editor’s Note: Nathan Jowers graduated in January 2019 from ACU. He is headed to Yale University in the fall to continue religion studies. For the past four years, he has called Abilene, and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, home.