POETIC TINKERINGS Dear reader: the following poems—if they can be called that—are my occasional attempts at writing in a genre for which I have little skill. Few of them have been published. Although the poems may not constitute good poetry, I offer them here for a reason: I have transformed many of them into prose and included them—or portions of them—as passages in my memoir, Pilgrim River. To my delight, many people have commented on some of those passages, saying a variant of, that passage is so poetic, or, I love the lyrical prose in that section. The lesson learned? Although I may not be a poet, there’s no harm in tinkering. I can always remove gratuitous line breaks and convert the poem into prose. "Toward a Theology of the Unfinished Poem” “On Rilke's Poems to God” "Solitude” “Raw Desert Poet” “Great Basin” “Ghost Town (Tenebrae)” “The Hunter and the Hunted” “As the Stream Flows” “Juan de la Cruz, Can You Hear Me!” "The Empty Space Between Words” "Desert Flower/Introvert” "Earth, Stream, Light” "Commitment/After the Hollow Times” "Eros, Philia, Agape” "A Father Never Found” "Whorehouse“ "Tears, Flowing into Emptiness”