If I were asked what the most company themes in poetry are, I’d likely answer with two words: love and nature. Poets used to write a lot about love. But love as a poetry theme has suffered a serious blow in the popularity ratings in the last couple of generations. But nature? Poets have likely been speaking and writing about nature since the literary art was invented. Poets are still writing about nature. These days, writing about nature contains far fewer pitfalls than writing about love.
Then I read Fixed Hours: Poems by Kortney Garrison. Many, perhaps most, of the poems use nature. She doesn’t celebrate nature for the sake of nature. Instead, she uses nature as a metaphor, and not for one particular thing, but for many things. And she uses nature in a deliberative, thoughtful, almost prayerful way.
Two years ago, I posteda poem about a visit to the crypt of St. Bride’s Churchin London. It’s known as the Journalists’ Church because of its proximity to Fleet Street. There are no newspapers left on Fleet Street; they all moved to the suburbs decades ago. But the history persists, and so does the church.
That visit inspired a short story, published today in the Autumn 2026 issue of Cultivating. The story is “Brother Lionel,” and it’s a story about forgiveness. It joins articles, poems, and similar contributions by 19 other writers on the general theme of "renewing forgiveness."
St. Bride’s Church is famous for its tiered steeple, the inspiration for wedding cakes worldwide. The crypt below the church has a museum, a short walk of artifacts, and this chapel.
The (unnamed) writer at A London Inheritance had a post this week about taking a walk in London. She calls pat of the “Rocque Ring,” and it forms the boundary of London in 1745. It begins at the Blue Coat School, located on Caxton Lane at the corner of Buckingham Gate, goes past Buckingham Palace, and then moves up Constitution Hill to Hyde Park. Our hotel – the one we’ve stayed at six times since 2013, is a short block from the Blue Coat School. This was “our neighborhood,” close to Victoria, near the Wellington Guards Barracks, and two blocks from the Palace and St. James’s Park. We could, and often did, walk to Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, and even Westminster Abbey. And we could, and often did, run into all the protests that are a daily occurrence in London.
Englishman Henry Oliver, who writes about books, found himself in the Middle South of the United States – Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. And he discovered that there’s nothing boring in America.
