Suzanne Cleary

Was That You Boss

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“Steve Rhodes’s poetic sequence Boss begins, ‘I went walking in the marsh / Boss the one with live oaks / dead pines cypress knees,’ sweeping us into a spiritual journey that is field guide, psalter, cry, and song. This opening poem wonders ‘was that you Boss / beneath cypress and tupelo.’ In compact lines stripped to the essential, this human voice bluntly addresses a God who is elusive, mysterious, even bewildering, a trickster God whom the speaker knows to be the steadiest of companions.”