TIMOTHY E. G. BARTEL

Timothy E. G. Bartel is a poet and professor from California.  His poems have appeared in Christianity and Literature, Curator, Saint Katherine Review, Relief, The Scotsman, and Windhover.  His most recent book of poems is A Crown for Abba Moses (Solum Literary Press, 2023). Timothy is the editor of the Californios Chapbook Series and teaches writing at The College at Saint Constantine.

TOO LATE OR NOT TOO LATE

There comes a sense as Fall is lengthening

That you are too far in to draw your mind

Back out to summer, or to what you thought

In spring. The leaves are much too brown, and in

The mornings there is frost as often as

There’s not. You’re made complicit with the year,

With its accomplishments and with its guilt,

With all the things concluded in its span:

A book that’s finally read, the argument

That never got resolved, a failure to

Explain yourself to those who were confused.

I’d like to say: it’s not too late for you —

There is no snow upon the roads just yet;

There’s light to still repent and not forget.

Read more of Timothy’s work in his full-length poetry collection, A Crown for Abba Moses, and in Solum Journal Volumes I and IV.