A 5th Ave Litany
Author Tyler A. Saldaña
Find me here, God. In the midst of the passing cars on 5th Ave and the laboring washer/dryer, the distant descending airplanes and the adolescents trailing into school, I hear my feathered neighbors sing— Find me here. In the soreness of my shoulders and the tension in my stiff neck, the ache of my knees and the crackling of my toes, I feel my breath distribute life to my body— Find me here. In the toils of today and the anxieties in my soul, the straining of my mind and the giving of myself to others, I see seeds being sown and plants watered— Find me here. O, my God— Find me here.
We’re hard at work preparing our first poetry anthology, shaped by the voices and authors published in Poems & Paraboles.
Poems & Paraboles will publish and release its first full-length print anthology in Winter 2026 under the official publisher name Parabole Press—an independent poetry company. The exact release date will be announced soon.
The anthology is a collaborative poetry collection that took the course of one year to compile and bring to fruition. Twenty-six authors will be represented in the anthology. Congratulations to the authors for being involved in this literary feat!
For years the old man
with the long grey hair
and sapphire blue eyes
brought 4 gallons of chocolate
milk each Sunday to the Center for Hope:
he knew that homeless families
took shelter there, and he’d seen some kids.
One day the janitor noticed him
saying ‘you are the one?’
Yes, why do you ask?
‘O, some mornings it comes with our
breakfast—this is a halfway house
with sixty inmates
we pour it on our cereal
it is the best part of our day
some of us pray for you.’
The old man can’t drive anymore
but he sits in the park wondering.
'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ The promise is: do these things and you will be in relationship with God. But the Salvation Army and Goodwill are overwhelmed with the homeless families, the food banks chronically run low, and who really cares that they run halfway houses for the incarcerated? Do you?