Communion continues the spiritual and philosophical explorations of Soul’s Flight and The Illuminated Life by playing chords, taking down dictation from the muse, imagination and soul––through old and emerging disciplines––to feel resonance not only with ancestors’ dreams but also with the poet’s place in the world. In doing so, Communion recognizes ancient doctrine in modern faiths. The poems reach for the divine by charting soul’s migration from willow fen to farmyard, out to the cosmos, back in through the Earth, to a raven or mountain for voicing again its search for communion with the divine. The poems, inspired and helped along by Augustine, Gregory of Nazianzus, archetypes and shamanism, bring more than wine and bread, blood and body to the practice of communion. Through free verse, sestina, and glosa, Communion is a river, a tête-à-tête with the dead, a watchman at the gate, a horse, and an image of the world where words build a bridge––corpus pontiflex––between God and humans.

Born in Calgary, writer Nancy Mackenzie spent her childhood on a horse ranch in Cochrane, Alberta. A graduate of Acadia University in Nova Scotia, she now resides in Edmonton.

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