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Alexander Levering Kern is a poet, editor, university chaplain, Quaker educator, and interfaith community organizer. Author of What an Island Knows (Shanti Arts, 2024) and a forthcoming poetry collection from Červená Barva Press, Alex is editor of the anthology Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations. Founding editor-publisher of Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts (www.pensive.com), Alex serves as Northeastern University’s founding Executive Director of the interfaith Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service. Recently selected for a Residency at T.S. Eliot House in Gloucester, Massachusetts and as an Advisory Council member of the New England Poetry Club.

Alexander Levering Kern

The Larger Life Is

                – after “Winter Morning” by James Crews

When I pause in the busyness of midweek
to write you a love letter, dear world out my window,
sometimes I hear only the rumble drum drum
of the recycling bins, the hiss of air brakes
from the dump truck nearby, as if our lives
were just squeezed loose from a hot air balloon,
but when I open my eyes, my ears, my mouth,
I can taste & see that you are good, oh precious life,
as dear as the tears of yesterday
that well in my eyes, knowing this life is not forever,
but maybe another is waiting within:
a wider horizon beyond the veil,
out over the rooftops of Somerville
past the great bell tower of Saint Catherine’s
just up the hill, and down the green corridors
of light in the woods – and yes, maybe heaven
is not far away, nearer, perhaps,
than I am to myself, made all the sweeter
because I share it with you.

— Alexander Levering Kern

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