From the Desk of Luke T. Bitzkie

Ich sehe den Bäumen die Stürme an, die aus laugewordenen Tagen an meine ängstlichen Fenster schlagen, und höre die Fernen Dinge sagen, die ich nicht ohne Freund ertragen, nicht ohne Schwester lieben kann. Da geht der Sturm, ein Umgestalter, geht durch den Wald und durch die Zeit, und alles ist wie ohne Alter: die Landschaft, wie ein Vers im Psalter, ist Ernst und Wucht und Ewigkeit. Wie ist das klein, womit wir ringen, was mit uns ringt, wie ist das groß; ließen wir, ähnlicher den Dingen, uns so vom großen Sturm bezwingen, - wir würden weit und namenlos. Was wir besiegen, ist das Kleine, und der Erfolg selbst macht uns klein. Das Ewige und Ungemeine will nicht von uns gebogen sein. Das ist der Engel, der den Ringern des Alten Testaments erschien: wenn seiner Widersacher Sehnen im Kampfe sich metallen dehnen, fühlt er sie unter seinen Fingern wie Saiten tiefer Melodien. Wen dieser Engel überwand, welcher so oft auf Kampf verzichtet, der geht gerecht und aufgerichtet und groß aus jener h...

Two nights ago, I dreamt that bombs fell on my home. I was with my family when orange light split the sky and rockets came down. In that moment, I made peace that I would die. Maybe I did so because I thought I couldn't cease to be. I woke from that dream to the incessant vibration of my phone. A friend was calling me, who I ignored last time he did. I let it ring. When I didn't answer, he texted me. Our old friend had died less than an hour before. Isn't it odd how dreams border reality? I often see little difference between life’s two dimensions of the body and the spirit. For a time, I understood them as the same. For my fore-bearers, there was only the body. One moment you’re here, the next you’re gone to the grave. I think that’s why we bury bodies instead of spreading ash. It may be a sign of resurrective hope, but I think a part of us doesn’t want to let them go. When I visited my uncle’s grave a couple times ago, I felt a sense of loss. I was home and thought it tim...

One's language holds so much culture. I think that's part of the reason that I love studying languages. I get to see the little intricacies that are contained in the syntactical patterns, or in the words that just don't translate to my native English. It's the way that tenses just don't exist in Biblical Hebrew, or, in Spanish, how pronouns just fall to the wayside. It's the way that everything has a marked place in Koine Greek, and how the dual scripts of Ladino each beautifully portray its prose. But also, it's the way that I miss the language that I never knew. It's how my great-grandma's language was robbed from her by the wars of years past. It's how the German of my foreparents has never graced my lips, and the only way it might is through my attempt at a modern-German recreation. I wonder: what words did they make me forget when my great-grandma had it hidden, stuffed down so deep that it became lost within her bones? What words will I nev...

לאחרונה קשה לי למצוא מילים לפרסם. ובכל זאת, אני חולם כבר זמן־מה על לכתוב משהו גדול. א   התחלתי בנסיון לכתוב הקדמה לספר, אחר כך חיבור פולמוסי, אחר כך דרשה, ולבסוף אוסף שירים. אבל, כל אחד מהם נפל קצר מחזוני עבורם. חזיונות אלו הפכו להבל כשניסיתי למשוך אותם מאחורי עיניי. א אז, החלטתי לכתוב שירים בודדים, משוחררים מכל אוסף או נושא. כאן, חזיונותיי התממשו. א כאן, הם עדיין מתממשים. א הם מתממשים באמנות שניתן להחזיק במעט מילים. הם מתממשים באמנות המתייחסת גם למילים שבאו מזמן רב לפני.  הם מתממשים בשפות שבעבר היו זרות וברעיונות שעדיין נעבדים ומתממשים. א האם זוהי מתנה, להיות מוגבל ביכולתו ליצור? אינני יודע. א

"It was so confusing. I feel like I wasn't enough to keep him here, you know?" "What would you say to them?" "But, the sparrow still falls." "It will be in the past for the rest of time." "I don't understand... how do people do it? I don't know how." "The concrete is still drying." - I grew up always scared and fascinated by floods. I remember running out of my house and down to the creek to watch as the waters rose from a trickle to a menacing stream. I still have a piece of pavement from the road, in fact. This was when I could watch as water finally reentered my homeland after our long droughts. I couldn't have imagined that one like this would hit my home, though. Children are dead. Parents are dead. Animals are dead. There are still more. Old friends help with rescue efforts. Family helps with clean up. I lay stranded in mind and spirit by the weight of it all. What good is a God that lets a sparrow fall, ...

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be " home ." Is home the places that we've once lived, or is it the people who've lived there with us? Is it both? Perhaps home something else entirely, something we're always creating as life goes on.  I've no answer to this question, but I've listened to many songs that speak of home. These songs all speak of their artists' own homes. Their musings aren't exact, and they aren't necessarily all full truths. But, they are all singing of some conception of their homes, even if they exist only in their own minds. Here are some of these artists' musings of their own homes, found, as is usual, in the words of country songs: "Deep within' my heart lies a melody, a song of old San Antone; where in dreams I live with a memory, beneath the stars all alone. It was there I found beside the Alamo, enchantment strange as the blue up above; a moonlit path that only she would know, still hears ...

" I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug. " I had been undergoing a health struggle for a prolonged period. I had navigated multiple doctors and doctors' offices, and after long and excruciating three months, I had finally found my way to a specialist. I was relieved but still weary as I sat waiting to be seen. I had traveled to another city in the hope that she could help me, potentially even cure me. But, what if she couldn't help? What if I was to be stuck like this? Precisely on-time, the doctor entered the room. She introduced herself, examined me, and we talked for a while. We discussed diagnoses, treatments, and the like. She listened to me, as a patient, and I listened to her, as a medical provider. And, as the appointment was concluding, I found myself feeling a slight tremor of hope within my soul. Perhaps, I could be cured. ...

One of my favorite things that Paw and I would do together was ride in his white Chevy pickup. The long rides down to Uncle JJ’s farm, the short rides home from middle school football practice, and every time that we rode down East Bear Springs Road together. He seemed to love to give up his time to drive me around, long before I could drive myself. That was my Paw, and that’s where I spent the best time with him – riding in his pickup truck. My favorite memory with Paw was doing just that. We were driving down East Bear Springs, and we were crossing the creek where the road dipped down. I don’t remember where we were going, or why. I just remember that we were together, me and Paw. “Coca-Cola Cowboy” by Mel Tillis was the song on the radio. I don’t exactly remember if he or I started singing first, probably me, but by the time that the road dipped down, we were both singing that song, together , me and Paw. I’ll always cherish that moment we had, singing along to a song. A so...

A CEO was murdered. The police launched a manhunt and caught the assassin. A mom was denied medicine for her child. The child died. So it goes. A girl opened fire in a school. She killed two, wounded six. Ms. Barbara's kindergarteners go to school in the morning. So it goes. A bomb was dropped on tents. A family went in five directions. We go to the movies tonight. Perhaps we'll get popcorn. So it goes. A police cruiser speeds down the highway. The mother is dying. "Look at the pretty lights," the boy says. He sees a Christmas tree. So it goes. A man cries in the driver's seat. He was abused. "I need you," she says. He kisses her. This cycles. So it goes. "$X,000," says the politician. Those dinners could feed families. "At least he's liberal," says the starving mother. So it goes. The car was burning metal. "It's to remind me of home," he says. Bethlehem was bombed. So it goes. He played there. 19 dead. His brothers...

I told her that "you can't recreate a moment."  This phrase had been on my mind for a while - the idea that specific moments in time cannot be recreated, that such snapshots of one's life cannot be relived. When I said this to her, I acknowledged that life's moments are unique and that people are always growing and changing. We were discussing the preceding weeks that we spent growing in friendship, and though these moments were fun, simple, and seemingly right, the moments we experienced were unique to the time they happened. So, when I told her that "you can't recreate a moment," I knew the moments of the last few weeks to now be past. -- I remember driving back from swimming at the river, the doors off of the jeep and the wind blowing all around. I was alone, but fulfilled, having just finished swimming with my buddies for hours on end. The speedometer may have been broken, but it didn't matter how fast I was going. I was exactly where I wante...

Like Augustus McCrae, I'm partial to the evenings. I love to sit, relax, and watch as the sun trails its way to the horizon. Sometimes, I imagine my dad and grandpa in the chairs around me, talking about the weather as we wait for the beer-can chicken to finally be done. To these evenings, I am quite partial. These evenings are my safe space, my refuge from the world around me – the world around us. Yet, as I sit in the escape of these simple evenings, I know that I must soon return to the world, like my father and his father before him. I've come to realize these evenings don't last forever. The sun sets every night. Reflecting on these evenings, I have realized what an escape they truly are. Though they let me escape the rat race and exist without consequence, they are only a temporary release from the chaotic reality of the world. My evenings are only a speck of peace in the universe's conflict. My escape seems to be nothing more than a willful ignorance of the world...