Among Winter Cranes
“Even as birds that winter on the Nile…” (Purgatorio XXIV.64)
The Quarterly of the Christian Poetics Initiative | Vol. 9 Issue 4 | Autumn 2026
Like and Unlike Things: On Friendship And Radical Difference
by Jacob Schepers
Jacob Schepers is an editor at ballast, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary journal, and the author of the poetry collections Ugly Ground Swell Moss (Carbonation Press, 2026) and A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014). A CPI member, he received his PhD and MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where he is now the assistant director for outreach and research partnerships at the Franco Family Institute of Liberal Arts and the Public Good.
thoroughness and faultiness, what felt apology could look like in
unimpeded relation.
Ugly ground, your primacy is threatening out the life of it and of swell
moss to feel not itself if ever but ever a part of you, apart from you,
as close as it gets.
It burrows in the fissures of what you shaped to be a part of yourself,
openings that–at least to swell moss–nonetheless are fair game and,
though cheating at it, it plays.
I think often these days about how we relate to one another. About how we form bonds. About how we forgive. About how we seek to understand each other despite–and because–of our differences. With the journal’s theme of “Friendship” this year, I felt drawn to share some of these musings with you in the spirit of, well, friendship.
The driving force behind this lasting fascination of mine has been the release of my latest book of poetry, Ugly Ground Swell Moss (Carbonation Press, 2026). The book is, at turns, an investigation into nonhuman relations in the natural world and, at others, easily readable as an allegory for deeply human interactions among those closest to us. In the afterword to the book, I readily confess that I’m no systematic philosopher and “much prefer the lateral thinking that poetic processes depend on and thrive within.” I go so far to underscore this preference for uncertainty and write how “I’m grateful for big questions and for the relief of not having to answer them definitively.”
I make these caveats to let you know that not only do I lack rigorous answers but also that I can, at times, be a lousy friend. Among my circles, I’m known for my distaste of group chats. I barely keep up with my fantasy football league obligations. I can go months without thinking to check in. I’ll own all of this even as I’m wincing at writing them out. But what I can promise is that I do think deeply about the necessary good of friendship writ large. So, too, do I dwell on the miracle it is to connect with other individuals in the first place, knowing that we may very well occupy different lots in life, run on distinct bandwidths for friendship, and even carry divergent or downright opposing perspectives when it comes to matters of doctrine, politics, what have you.
I come about these observations honestly and earnestly, marveling at that miracle of accepting and understanding one another even with our faults and failures and occasionally less-than-forthright dealings with each other. And it’s in this sense that I position Ugly Ground Swell Moss and its broader project. Scattered throughout the collection are tangential epigraphs and so-called “Taxonomies” that draw on the 18th-century work and ensuing controversial legacy of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus and the 20th-century’s Lithuanian-born, French philosopher of Jewish heritage Emmanuel Levinas. Just as Ugly Ground Swell Moss turns and turns on the shifting relations between its title characters, so too do I refer to Linnaeus and Levinas as representative figures for broader intellectual frameworks. Each of their names evokes a certain approach or recognizable valence: for Linnaeus, the world and its inhabitants can be identified and catalogued with pronounced fixity; for Levinas, the central ethics of relationality comes down to radical unknowability and inscrutability of one another.
What I’m getting at comes back to the miracle and the gift of minds trying to meet one another, see one another, exactly where they’re at. Ours is a transactional world in so many ways, but true friendship seems to me a counterpoint. We may grow together, push each other, challenge each other, but always–one hopes–for the good of the other and not for some selfish ulterior motive. In that, friendship becomes a kind of grace as well as a gesture to a God who does know us intimately, wholly, to claim us as his own. I bookend this short essay with two excerpts from Ugly Ground Swell Moss, but indulge me as I share one final sentiment not my own, an epigraph from Levinas that I include in the collection: “The Other as Other is not here an object that becomes ours or becomes us; to the contrary, it withdraws into its mystery.”1
***
Some sort of keepsake swell moss may be–maybe so, maybe just then–as
if the well-kept secret of it all knew better.
Okay, not knowing but sensing or feeling–if that is any consolation.
Ugly ground, does it have to be this hard?
Do you have to be this hard?
Swell moss sure wants you to stick with it, to touch you with softness,
with the blurriness of self.
You have such sharp boundaries.
Where you leave off swell moss wants only–or perhaps not only–to help.
1 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existants. Translated by Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), 86.
Jacob Schepers
Assistant Director of Outreach and Research Partnership,
Franco Institute, University of Notre Dame
jscheper@nd.edu