Steadied By Each Other (prayer) - Soul Matters

Pulled in many directions by the demands of our days,
we light this chalice to remind us of the still point deep inside.
Made unsteady by the winds of unpredictable paths,
we light this chalice to remember the shelter of each other.
Longing for lights that lead us back to our truest selves,
we light this chalice to illuminate the faces of friends and sacred companions,
recalling once again that we find our way through the willingness
to take each other’s hand.

With Love As My Guide (prayer) - Cindy Terlazzo (adapted)

Amidst the swirl of life’s challenges, fears, and even moments of crisis,
[We] make time to gaze at the night sky to see the vastness there,
And to remember that this moment in time is but a flicker—
Not an inconsequential flicker—
For what [we] do and think now does matter.
[Our] work, though, is to let the debris of this world pass by
While [we] anchor [ourselves] to what [we] know is true:

Love, Kindness, Compassion.

Crickets (poem) - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

When they sing
it is a kind of love,
a pure-toned,
full-bodied ringing
born of friction.
You could say
it’s just a wingstroke
that makes a pulse of sound
that joins with all
the other pulses
to form a river of music,
and you would be right.
But there are many ways
to face the dark.
One is to hide.
One is to prowl.
One is to bring
the bright music
of your body
and offer it
to the night.

Last Night As I Was Sleeping (poem) by Antonio Machado; translated by Robert Bly

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón.



Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old bitternesses.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Quote - Forest Church - Sin

 Something like: 

"Sin is anything that divides us from our better selves, estranges us from our neighbors, or severs us from the ground of being."

Chicago Elegy - An Abortion Poem

 January 2000

I.

Brown grows between my legs --

I am no longer a mother.

Self can be constructed    deconstructed --

I can create and destroy.

Chicago makes magic        blue and fluid like michigan's lake

                                            black and red like that day

                                                              like that hole

                                                              like that blood not my blood

                                                                            blood no longer my blood

                                                                            blood no longer blood

Until the day I no longer bleed.

I am still bleeding.

II.

White catches brown -- 

I am free.

Time can be taken    given -- 

What they took I am given.

Chicago gives life on a day white covers streets like sheets

                                                                            like ice packs

            takes life in a wash of sweat

                                a swirl of brown and red

            takes a life not my life

            gives life no longer my life

Until the day I move on.

I am not moving.

III.

Blood red moon over gold -- 

I am an aunt    not a mother.

Being separate I am alone    not alone -- 

Distance and time makes me free.

Chicago fills the spirit with gold moon fire

                                            (gold light ripples on black)

            empties the body of unrecognized souls

                                            (blood red moon over gold -- 

                                                    we are free

                                                    you are me

                                                                 not me

                                                    you will never be

                                                                                me

                                                                   never be without me

                                                    you can never be free)

        ensconces the self among bodies    friends

        carries in the winds the sounds of home

        lifts my spirit wrapped in wind 

        and takes me home

               carries me home

               plunges me home in the dark, cold waters where it all began

                                                                                   where all life began

                                                                                   where everything begins

Until the day it begins for me.

It has already begun.

                                            

"Shelter in Place" (poem) by Kim Stafford

Long before the pandemic, the trees
knew how to guard one place with
roots and shade. Moss found
how to hug a stone for life.
Every stream works out how
to move in place, staying home
even as it flows generously
outward, sending bounty far.
Now is our time to practice–
singing from balconies, sending
words of comfort by any courier,
hoarding lonesome generosity
to shine in all directions like stars.

"About Standing (in Kinship)" (poem) by Kimberly Blaeser

We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.
Maybe we should give more honor to feet
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.

"Declaration of Inter-dependence" (poem) by Richard Blanco

Such has been the patient sufferance...

We’re a mother’s bread, instant potatoes, milk at a checkout line; her three children pleading for bubble gum and their father. We’re the three minutes she steals to page a tabloid, needing to believe even stars’ lives are as joyful and bruised.

Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury...

We’re her second job serving an executive in a shark-grey suit absorbed in his Fortune magazine at a sidewalk café. We’re the shadow of skyscrapers like giant chess pieces in a game he bet his family on, and lost. We’re the lost. We’re a father who can’t mine a life anymore in a town where too much, too little has happened, for too long.

A history of repeated injuries and usurpations…

We’re the grit of his main street’s blacked-out windows and spray-painted truths. Or a street lined with Royal palms—home to a Peace Corps couple who now collect art and winter in Aruba. We’re their dinner-party-talk of wines and picket signs once wielded, retirement accounts and draft cards once burned. We’re their knowing it’s time to do more than read the New York Times, buy fair-trade coffee and grass-fed beef.

In every stage of oppressions we have petitioned for redress…

We’re the canned corn of a farmer who plows into his couch as worn as his back by the end of the day. We’re watching news having everything, nothing to do with the field dust in his eyes or his son nested in the ache of his arms. We’re his son. And a black son who drove too fast or too slow, talked too much or too little, moved too quickly, but not quick enough for a bullet. We’re our dead, our blood-stained blackboards, dance floors, church pulpits.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…

We’re the living who light vigil candles and the cop who didn’t shoot. We’re the inmate with his volunteer teacher diagraming sentences, the Buddhist alongside the stockbroker serving soup at a shelter. We’re the grandfather taking a selfie with his grandson and his husband, the widow’s fifty cents in the collection plate and the golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for a cure.

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

We’re them. They’re you. You’re me. We’re us: a handshake, a smile good morning on the bus, a door held open, a seat we give up on the subway. We tend restrooms or sell art, make huevos rancheros or herbed salmon, run for mayor or restock shelves, work a backhoe or write poems. We’re a poem in progress.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people…

to fulfill the promise of being one people, necessary to abolish any government that becomes destructive of these ends, necessary to dissolve the political bans that keep us from speaking to each other, necessary to avow our interdependence, to look straight into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon, and declare to one another: I see you. I see you. I see you. 

As published in Split This Rock 

"What Does a Hummingbird Do When It Rains?" (poem) by Janet M. Ruth

I had always imagined
a hummingbird huddled
    beneath a broad leaf
        or a stout branch
cringing from soaking rain drops

    until today

during a calm steady 

    Navajo “female rain”
rufous hummingbird perches
ocotillo stalk tip
    bursts with tiny green leaves
        celebrating monsoon

he fans his tail
    blurs his wings but stays perched
dips his bill
    preens breast feathers
helicopters vertically
    a foot above the branch
returns
    repeats the exercise
raindrops glitter on fiery plumage

hummingbird takes a shower
    that’s what he does

Two poems named "Water" by Michelle Otero

Water

We tell the children tales
of thunderstorms. Each May we drop
rose petals into trickling acequia, invoke
San Ysidro for good harvest, good rain
pray these petals seed clouds. We remember
summers of fire, haze over mesa, sunset behind a scrim
of smoke, torches in the Jemez, torches in the Sangres
kindling night roads from Santa Fe to Santo Domingo.

What if it never rains again?

What if
    it never rains
        again?

Water

This is New Mexico. Here
life walks in circles. In drought, we
the people look to the skies,
put a hand to the ground.
In drought, we
the people
are water.

“With or Without Candlelight” (poem) by John Marsh

If you are going to meditate by candlelight,
do not hurry to light the candle.
The glow may concentrate your energies, but it will 

    cost you
the contours of the room.

If you walk the night forest by flashlight,
the electric beam may reveal details on your path,
but you will lose everything
outside your concentrated ray.
All that your light does not expose will become alien.
The sounds of animals will frighten you.

Shut off the beam, and you will travel the night forest
as one who belongs.

Let us praise things dark and beautiful:

The quiet of closed eyelids
The childhood of chocolate
The respectability of newsprint
The suddenness of a bat’s wing
The invitation of brewing coffee
The persistence of tar
The gentleness of nutmeg
The temptation of a cave.

If you are going to meditate by candlelight,
do not hurry to light the candle.

"The Word" (poem) by Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,

but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

"Small Kindnesses" (poem) by Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

"The Thing Is" (poem) by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

"Rabbit" (poem) by Heather Swan

After a long numbness, I wake
and suddenly I’m noticing everything,
all of it piercing me with its beautiful,
radical trust: the carpenter bee tonguing
the needles of echinacea believing
in their sweetness, the exuberance
of an orange day lily unfolding itself
at the edge of the street, and the way
the moss knows the stone, and the stone
accepts its trespass, and the way the dog
on his leash turns to see if I’m holding on,
certain I know where to go. And the way
the baby rabbit - whose trembling ears
are the most delicate cups - trusts me,
because I pried the same dogs’ jaws
off his hips, and then allows me to feed him
clover when his back legs no longer work,
forcing me to think about forgiveness
and those I need to forgive, and to hope
I am forgiven, and just maybe
I can forgive myself. This unstoppable,
excruciating tenderness everywhere inviting
us, always inviting. And then later, the firefly
illuminating the lantern of its body,
like us, each time we laugh.

"A Good Story" (poem) by Ada Limón

Some days--dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table--

are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches,

dizziness and everywhere it hurts. Venom in the jaw, behind the eyes,

between the blades. Still, the dog is snoring on my right, the cat, on my left.

Outisde, all those redbuds are just getting good. I tell a friend, The body

is so body. And she nods. I used to like the darkest stories, the bleak

snippets someone would toss out about just how bad it could get.

My stepfather told me a story about when he lived on the streets as a kid,

how he'd, some nights, sleep under the grill at a fast food restaurant until both he and his buddy got fired. I used to like that story for some reason,

something in me that believed in overcoming. Bur right now all I want 

is a story about human kindness, the way once when I couldn't stop

crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made

me eat a small pizza he'd cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped.

Maybe I was just hungry, I said. And he nodded, holding out the last piece.

"The End" (poem) by Lynn Ungar

Perhaps you’ve held this image in your head since you were young –
the meteor blazing towards earth,
the seismic shock of impact,
a lethal rain of molten rock falling from the sky,
followed by months or years of dusk and winter.

Dinosaurs – gone.
Lush jungles – gone.
Teaming seas – empty.
Billions of years of evolution wiped from the earth.

Only, of course, not.
After all, a paltry 65 million years later,
here we are.

I don’t know what kind of small and scuttling creatures found a way to make it through.
Nor do I know how.
All I know is that there was an explosion of new life the likes of which the world has never seen.

Evolution is the predicate of death.
The sentence is not complete.

The end of the world as you know it is not the end of the world.

"What Matters" by Terri Kirby Erickson (poem)

The present has arrived
and you are in it. Your heart
is pumping. Your breath moves

in and out of your lungs without
anyone's help or permission.
Let go of everything else. Let

your life, handed to you through
no effort of your own, be all
the proof you need. You are loved.

Ross Gay - Forward to poetry collection "How to Love the World"

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about witness, about how witness is itself a kind of poetics, or poesis, which means making. By which I mean I have been wondering about how we make the world in our witnessing of it. Or maybe I have come to understand, to believe, how we witness makes our world. This is why attending to what we love, what we are astonished by, what flummoxes us with beauty, is such crucial work. Such rigorous work. Likewise, studying how we care, and are cared for, how we tend and are tended to, how we give and are given, is such necessary work. It makes the world. Witnessing how we are loved and how we love makes the world.