I wish I loved lawnmowers (poem) by Mark Waldren

I really do wish I did. Because if I loved
lawnmowers I could go

to the lawnmower museum I just heard
about on the radio in a piece

about small museums.
It’s in Southport apparently — 

a seaside town “fringed to the north by
the Ribble Estuary,” according to Wikipedia.

It would be quite a trip to go up there,
and I’d almost certainly

have to stay the night. I think I might stay
in the Prince of Wales Hotel, which looks

conveniently situated for the station
and the museum too. I can hardly bear

to think how much I’d be looking forward
to making that trip if I loved lawnmowers.

On the radio they said they have all sorts
of models from Victorian ones all the way

through to a state-of-the-art robot one
that’s powered by solar energy.

If I was planning the visit I’d probably
have a bit of a virtual walk-round

on Street View, and in fact I’ve just done
exactly that in an effort to capture

the feeling I’d have if I was actually
anticipating a trip to the lawnmower museum.

Exploring the area I discovered
that Southport looks very much like

Weston-super-Mare, where, as it happens,
I stayed in a halfway house many

years ago after doing a stint in rehab.
Now crack cocaine — that I loved.

Notes:

This poem originally appeared in The Poetry Review. You can read the other poems in this exchange in the May 2017 issue.

Socratic (poem) by Jacqueline Jones LaMon

The students know the agenda. When I step
inside our classroom, the PowerPoint is loaded,
the student presenting her report stands poised

to begin. And so she does. This day is her
second try, the first a wash due to our failed
technology. I ask, Do you think you will earn

another chance each time error is out of your hands?
This day, a new day, she stands confident,
prepared for questions from her peers, the one

question she’s noted that I ask of them all — 
What is it that this artist has allowed you
to achieve? This day, I forget the other

questions I always wait to ask. This day, they ask
no others, just stare outside at the lot
of parked cars, play with the ends of their hair.

They want to hear voices that give them reason
to listen. They want the blare of car horn,
tires screeching without a final thud. They

want a lecture, a formula that does it all,
a recitation of the method that always gets
things done. And one woman says it, that she

is sad, and all of them nod, and another says
that she is angry, too. And how could they
not indict. And why won’t justice ever be

served. And why won’t anyone do anything
to change the America in which we live. And
I look at my classroom — the brown, the black,

and the white of my room — and I ask who
it is that must make the change we need.
And they talk about the Government. They

talk about the System. They talk about our
Economics. And our Judges. And our Juries.
They. And they tell me of their lives, their fears,

their boyfriends and their fathers, our illness
and our poverty, their rights and their desires,
how none of us are ever safe. And the room

becomes their last surrender while they wait
for me to teach. I say, This is the part where
you wait for me to synthesize your words

then tell you what to do. And every face
grows hopeful, just as we all did the night
before, before we knew what we’ve always

known, that knowing the truth doesn’t save
us. And I take a sip of water and tell them
every true thing that I know — that they are

the power who will save what needs saving,
then answer their next questions with more
and more questions, asking until time is up.

Source: Poetry (June 2017)

Yes, We Can Talk (Poem) by Mark Nepo

Having loved enough and lost enough,
I am no longer searching,
just opening.

No longer trying to make sense of pain,
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.

These are the irritations that rub into a pearl

So we can talk awhile
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea

And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions down,
and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone, but seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it is a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather
into the surf that human shells
call god.

Quote - John Gardner

"Life pulls things out of you... You have within you more ... strength than has ever been tested, more to give than you have ever given."

-- John Gardner, "Personal Renewal"

Delivered to McKinsey & Company, Phoenix, AZ
November 10, 1990

domestic poem - Eileen Moeller

nightfall I sink
into dishwash meditation
steaming china prayer wheels
crystalline bells of the lost horizon
crockery mandalas
chanting din and lull of running water
breathing slows
moist heat muscles soften
zen poems drip from silverware
my air humming out
in a cleansing melody
washing the frantic stew of a whole day
down the drain
along with the suds
those transient rainbow things
with the thin skin of
a passing instant.

Poem - Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note - Amiri Baraka

for Kellie Jones, born 16 May 1959

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands.

Poem - There is a Light in Me - Anna Swir

Whether in daytime or in nighttime
I always carry inside
a light.
In the middle of noise and turmoil
I carry silence.
Always
I carry light and silence.

Poem - 2 a.m. - Dorianne Laux

When I came with you that first time 

on the floor of your office, the dirty carpet
under my back, the heel of one foot
propped on your shoulder, I went ahead
and screamed, full-throated, as loud
and as long as my body demanded,
because somewhere, in the back of my mind,
packed in the smallest neurons still capable
of thought, I remembered
we were in a warehouse district
and that no sentient being resided for miles.
Afterwards, when I would unclench
my hands and open my eyes, I looked up.
You were on your knees, your arms
stranded at your sides, so still --
the light from the crooknecked lamp
sculpting each lift and delicate twist,
the lax muscles, the smallest veins
on the backs of your hands. I saw
the ridge of each rib, the blue hollow
pulsing at your throat, all the colors
in your long blunt cut hair which hung
over your face like a raffia curtain
in some south sea island hut.
And as each bright synapse unfurled
and followed its path, I recalled
a story I'd read that explained why women
cry out when they come -- that it's
the call of the conqueror, a siren howl
of possession. So I looked again
and it felt true, your whole body
seemed defeated, owned, having taken on
the aspect of a slave in shackles, the wrists
loosely bound with invisible rope.
And when you finally spoke you didn't
lift your head but simply moaned the word god
on an exhalation of breath -- I knew then
I must be merciful, benevolent,
impossibly kind.

Poem - Last Skin - Barbara Ras

Has anyone described the smell of wishbones drying
on the kitchen sill or the smell of glass, or the bucket of water
lifted from the well we go to when death takes the last thirst
from someone we love?

After my mother died, sometimes
I'd take the one piece of her clothing I'd kept
to bed and bury my face
in her flowered blouse to smell her last skin,
but even from the first it was futile.

What I got was the smell of goneness, the smell of screen
doors where moths have spent their wing powder
beating failingly to reach the light.

My massage therapist said she felt grief
in my body like hard empty boxes.
I felt like I was always handling dough,
never wanting the kneading to be done, never wanting
to bake the bread that meant the end of something having to do
with a mother and daughter in a kitchen.

My mother has been gone for years, and I begin to see,
in the spots on the backs of my hands, in the shelf
my cheekbones make for my cheeks, in the way I hold
my mouth against gravity's pull, that I carry her
with me, my skin, her skin,
her last skin.

Poem - (After God Herself) - Justice Ameer

Adam ate an apple
it got stuck in his throat
and they called him Eve
the progenitor
the creator of all things
the mother of strength
and fortitude
and sadness
Adam ate an apple
choked on it so hard
a rib popped out of his chest
and they called it Eve
the progenitor
the creator of all things
the mother of strength and fortitude
and sadness
it takes the hacking of a body
to make a woman
Adam hacking up a piece of his body
it was just a piece of fruit
they called me fruit once too
they called me fruity
before they called me flaming
before they called me faggot
before they called me woman
i thought i would have
to hack this body into pieces
woman, a name stuck in my throat
right under the apple Adam tried to eat
choked on it for years
waited for my ribs to pop out
my chest to explode
for my Eve to be created
from the fruit i couldn’t swallow
they called me fruit once
until they called me woman
and then they just called me fruitless
as if it took a womb to be
progenitor
creator
mother of all things
strength and fortitude and sadness
they reckon God looked
at the image of herself
and called it Adam
they still don’t call me woman
they still don’t birth me Eve
even though they cast me out
my throat shrunken close
with the fruit still stuck in it
like Adam
before they called him Eve
and suddenly i am a stranger
to Eden
i am a stranger to this body
as if it hadn’t always been mine
i reckon God looked
at the image of herself
and called it me
but i don’t know if that
was before or after the apple
before or after Adam choked
which came first
the progenitor or the mother
the apple or the rib
the strength or the sadness
this body was God’s original creation
but they called it sin
they called it Adam
I reckon God looked
at the image of  herself
and called Adam Eve
after she choked on his name
some fruit that bloomed
in everyone else’s throat
but she could never quite swallow
the fall of man was an apple
hacked up from a fruitless body
a woman learning what evil was
like a man forcing his name upon you
the fall of man was a rib
being torn from a chest
and men calling that violence holy
naming a woman based only
on the body parts she’s made of
the fall of man
was the beginning of Eve
Eve casting out Adam’s name
Eve discovering who she was
the progenitor
the creator of all things
the mother of strength
and fortitude
and sadness
the fall of man
was Eve becoming a woman
with or without Eden’s approval
and now
every time someone
tries to call her Adam
tries to force the apple
of his name down her throat
she laughs
she swallows
she looks at God herself
and she smiles

"Lost is a place, too." - Paula Stone Williams

 In a TedxTalk about being a transgender woman and dealing with sexism. She's a preacher.

Understanding Racism - Allegories - A Gardener's Tale

I keep going back to this video, where the public health researcher Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones tells 4 stories that help explain the different facets and fallacies of racism.

Dr. Jones was recently interviewed for an NPR story about CDC's resistance to examining its own institutional racism as a former employee of 14 years.

Her own work was on racism and public health, and she says she felt thwarted and undermined in her attempts to get the agency to address these issues. She says after a lunchtime presentation she gave on racism, she was asked to remove references to how racism " 'unfairly advantages other individuals and communities' off of my slide because that made white people uncomfortable."

Allegories on race and racism

• Japanese Lanterns: Colored Perceptions (starts at :53)
• Dual Reality: A Restaurant Saga (starts at 3:16)
• Levels of Racism: A Gardener's Tale (starts at 6:59)
• Life on a Conveyor Belt: Moving to Action (starts at 17:17)

Poem - Portrait of a Yo-Yo Artist - Caroline Harvey

He's the kind of man
that loves wide and strong but not often.
I don't know why,
but I hope it's me he chooses to notice next.

Now a stop sign is a large red object that commands
stillness.
The brakes on the car --
moody.
Put those two things together and
you get one missed intersection
combined with the distinct feeling that this night
is about to get real --
symbolic.

Now a yo-yo is a small plastic toy
held together by an inner core
split down the middle and
wrapped with a string.
Slip your finger thru the tiny hole
at the end of the string
and throw the toy away from you
with the intention of pulling it back in.
Much the same way assholes leave their girlfriends
and show up the next day with flowers.

He
is a 6' tall 380 pound man.
Lips like a dam
threatening to break
into the kind of smile that evacuates cities.
It's dangerous when a man like this is happy.

Now peanut butter and jelly
are two things that go together like ham and cheese.
But a yo-yo and a 380 lb man
make about as much sense
as combining the words military and intelligence.
It's as obvious as Peach
and the Giant James
But his name is David.
The undisputed yo-yo king, and he's big.
Absolutely, unbelievably, gigantically big.
Big like overflowing from within big.
Big like full right up to the brim big
and can't do anything but be big big.
Fuck super sized!
He is mad hecka mega sized ocean sized planet sized
the whole solar system got you hypnotized and mesmerized kind of
larger than life-sized. Big!
And I'm small.

But he says
you gotta trust me.
So I do it implicitly
because if a man this big is that great
with something as small as a yo-yo
then I know I'm in good hands.
Even though for most men
I am more than a handful.

We're headed to a club where yo-yo players
as good as David don't pay
and never ask twice for a refill.
And maybe the waitresses don't know it
but there is more to him than a small plastic toy.
He makes me want to do cannonballs into the Bay
just so I can feel like this tiny body
has the power to make waves.
I want to grab the places on him that don't fit into boxes
and steal some of his greatness for myself.
And I  know there are people so small-minded
they would say he's too big
but it's amazing how small the word big is.

As we drive across the bridge
David pops his collar away from his neck
in two two staccato beats.
I can tell this silent monologue
is built into the marrow of his behavior
the way warmth is built into sunshine
and as this detail colors in his broad outlines
my first impression turns from draft to print.

Now, a bridge is an object that spans an obstacle
and connects two different points.
We are two people full to the brim
with what's been left unsaid.
Put those things together
and you get the kind of moment
that the old insist is worth growing old for
just so you can spend your life remembering.
Picture it: a girl leans onto the shoulder of a man
because she can't find words for what's in her heart.

Now a heart is kinda like a small plastic toy
an inner core split down the middle
wrapped with a string.
Kinda like people
held only by heart strings we wrap around fingers
throwing everything we have into a moment
where fear makes us feel like we're about to snap.
And every time we fall
most of us just hope we'll return,
safely wrapped and still in one piece.
Blindly trusting the good hands of a stranger
to spin us toward home.

Song - Amazing Gratitude - Hal Walker

This is one of my favorite songs from UU church right now:

Living Deeply

Today was Alicia Hawkins' memorial on Zoom. I'm watching the postlude now.

What a life well-lived.

Her granddaughter shared that her grandmother's love and equanimity was home. I want to live there!

She taught dozens and dozens of people - a dozen at a time - how to listen and love in covenant.

She worked, bringing value and peace wherever she went. Christine shared a story that she would offer to help people in ways that they wouldn't take as a criticism. She learned offering to do laundry was usually safe! So she did lots and lots of laundry.

I am feeling that I have failed the lesson she was offering me for years - how to live more deeply, listen more deeply, question more deeply.

And in this COVID moment, it's a lesson that I need more than ever. I am approaching middle age feeling very nervous about what I will have to show for my life. Whether I could go out with the grace that Alicia did. Knowing she had tended to all she could. Visited widely. Thought deeply. Loved deeply and well.

May her light shine in all who commit to shining for themselves and others.

Coronavirus: Month 3

We are three months into the coronavirus, and the only thing that's different now than when all this started is that now there are over 2 million cases of coronavirus in the U.S. - and rising steeply - and almost 11,000 cases in New Mexico. And we miss each other.

The kids are antsy and want to see grandparents and friends. I want to see friends, too.

But nothing is any better. Actually, worse than 3 months ago, so what's to justify loosening our stay-at-home strategy? If there's anything worth emerging for, it's Black Lives Matter protests.

Instead, it's lots of walks. Lots and lots of walks. And work. And church. And games. And reading.

Which isn't a bad life. Just small. And scary. And claustrophobic. I'm not feeling brave like other families who are heading out camping and backpacking. That would probably be good. But I barely have the energy to make it from waking up to bedtime. How would camping go?

Hard to have the energy for much more than survival mode. And feeling thankful for that.

Song - Love One Another - words and music by Jason Shelton

Alicia Hawkins - Quote Collections

Alicia Hawkins, beloved community member from First Unitarian in Albuquerque, New Mexico, passed away yesterday.

A year or so ago, Alicia mailed me a collection of quotes that she had been amassing for 15 years or so. She organized the quotes under topics: Perfection, Wounds We Can't Heal, Trust, Shadow...

In thinking of her, and in the spirit of sending out love and light into the world, as Alicia always did, here are a few relevant quotes from her brilliant collection:

Here's one of Alicia's own poems, which she categorized under "Living the Questions."

Don't tell me your answers,
tell me your doubts.
Don't drag out your expertise
tell me what baffles you.
Let me wander around in your realness,
not in your carefully mended mask.

Under "Sorrow/Suffering," these words from Mary Oliver:

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
That this, too, was a gift.

Under "Perseverance and Courage," these words from Jane Hirshfield (who wrote the poem "Optimism" - a real favorite of mine):

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

Under "Letting Go," these words from Christine Robinson:

Practice all the letting go's you can. From letting go of your thoughts in a meditation practice to letting go of your attachments to things and relationships that leave our lives constantly, practice letting go. Every goodbye you say is a practice for the big goodbye. Don't let a day go by without letting go of something!

Under "Death," these words from Rainer Maria Rilke:

The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.

And these from Kahlil Gibran:

When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And finally, these words from her dear friend and collaborator in three books, Christine Robinson:

The only legacy we leave is the light that shines from our life. 

Song - Comfort Me - words and music by Mimi Bornstein

This recording is from “Not Your Mama’s Hymns” by Unfolding (Laura Weiss and Sarah Jebian)

I Am Legend

I am being haunted by vague memories of this scary movie in which a global pandemic leaves this man living alone in his house with his dog, surviving the best he can while looking for a cure and for other survivors.

• I Am Legend (free withAmazon Prime)
• Plot summary (wikipedia)

I've been thinking of it so much, I figured I needed to just watch it to get it out of my head, like exposure therapy.

I got to the first really scary scene where the dog enters a dark building where you know the infected people must be. The thought of losing his one live contact in the world sent me reeling, and I fled to my balm of choice - Fixer Upper, where the most drama is just how annoyed Joanna will get with Chip's antics, and the most danger is whether they will find mold or pests in an old, old house.

I've heard people have been rewatching Contagion and Outbreak and other pandemic movies, but I hadn't heard I Am Legend mentioned. (One of the Late Night hosts I watch repeatedly used a clip from the end of The Hot Zone where the Julia Margulies character is infected with Ebola through a gap in her containment suit.)

It's unusual that I've seen I Am Legend. I haven't watched the other pandemic films. I avoid them. I Am Legend came out in December 2007. I can't remember whether I saw it in the theater, but that's hard for me to believe. I would have been just recently married, and this isn't the type of movie we would have picked together. Doesn't really matter. I've seen it, and now I can't get it out of my head, but I can't watch it, either.

It's brought a feeling of panic into my daily life that wasn't as on-the-surface before. It's compounding my reaction to Trump wanting the economy to open May 1 and to the conservative tea party extremists rallying to end stay-at-home orders and to the thoughtless hedonists in Florida flocking to the first open beach. Why are these people not scared into hunkering down? Are they really okay with the idea of tens of thousands of deaths? Survival of the fittest? Essential workers as replaceable?

I don't get it. And they scare me more than the virus. I'm scared for my family and my community and tribal communities and communities of color and my country and my world.

One of the scenes in I Am Legend is the Will Smith character hunting deer who have taken to flocking downtown Manhattan. I remember feeling incredulous that deer would pick this of all the other places on earth they could go. But I've been strangely tickled at the stories of wildlife taking back cities around the globe.

• CNN

It's like watching the forest come back around Chernobyl. A reminder that the earth really doesn't need us and doesn't care much whether we live or die. In fact, maybe has a slight preference to life's variety if we all perish, or at least, lose our place on top of the food and resource pyramids. (I've also been hearing the Hugo Weaving character - Agent Smith - ranting to the Laurence Fishbourne character about how humans are a virus, a plague that's taken over the earth.)

• "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."

And what is the countermeasure? 

• The Good News according to John Krasinski
• Zoom services from First Unitarian
• Brene Brown's podcast Unlocking Us (particularly the episode with Glennon Doyle, talking about Untamed)
• Cleaning my house, which I need to stop and do right now

May all things be well. May all measure of things be well. Namaste. Breathe. Be grateful. Don't yell at the children when they're only having fun. Go for a run outside (try not to hyperventilate while wearing the mask). Try not to think that this may not be temporary. Try not to miss hugs quite so much.

Poem - To Build a Swing - Hafiz

You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare --
Don’t mix them!

You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.

That sounds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.

I will help you
With my divine lyre and drum.

Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Sliver hammers,

Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.

You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix
Them!

Week 1: Coronavirus Quarantine

We just finished our first week -- not even a whole week -- at home together social distancing to flatten the curve, lowering the infection rate of the coronavirus to stave off medical disaster from all of us falling ill at once.

Most things have been shut down now. Restaurants are mostly closed or only doing walk-up or delivery, if they are open at all.

Stores are still open, but some shelves are bare.

I've been out once for groceries. Eric has gone out most days to buy something or other that we need. He gets stir crazy. I am fine nesting and being very grateful at the moment not to need to go out.

The kids are doing well with a new normal of an arbitrary structure of a daily schedule and help from Caroline on Mondays and Wednesdays, some help from Brenna, and some steering from us on the other days.

We've kept up game night and screen days. We fell off the wagon a bit this Sunday and last, watching more tv than we would have otherwise, but both days we worked on puzzles as we watched, so that *almost* counts.

I'm growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of real information. I don't even know what they think the infection rate is here in NM or whether the moves we've taken are helping to flatten the curve.

I work in City govt., yet I know nothing and have heard nothing from leadership since Sarita's email ordering us back to work one more time for "more direction."

I'm still resentful that I was made to feel like I was overreacting when I asked that my team be sent to work from home after APS cancelled school. Yet all the things that I mentioned in my email will soon come to pass as the standard routine, I think.

And I feel stupid carrying that resentment when there's a bigger picture that's much more frightening and warrants our full attention: the potential for this to be months long and millions of deaths in the U.S., thousands of deaths here in Albuquerque.

But even that's not worth worrying about beyond staying home and washing hands and surfaces, since it's impossible to get info about what measures the govtments are taking to build fever centers or even wings in the hospitals so that staff isn't carrying the virus from floor to floor.

Heidi seems lonely. Mom seems ok. Shelle told me Katon had come home from Spain and is under quarantine for 14 days.

I feel so grateful for everyone I know being well, and for being able to work from home, and for kids who still like learning and who aren't tearing each other apart -- yet.

And for Beckett's therapist, who is still coming to the house 5 days a week -- for now.

Heading into week 2, I want to remember more times during the day to take a breath and feel grateful and meditate to bring me back to now. To here. To safety in the ever-present now. For this to be enough.

Song - All Will Be Well - Meg Barnhouse

Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand. (x 2)

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about:

• sorrow
• pain
• hunger 
• shame?"

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

I said, "Julian, do you not know, do you not know about:

• loneliness
• disease
• cruelty?" 

I said "Julian, it's too much. It brought me to my knees."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about:

• sorrow
• pain
• hunger 
• shame."

She said, "All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

She said, "No one does not know, does not know about:

• loneliness
• disease
• cruelty. 

I know, it's too much. It brought me to my knees, where I heard:
'All will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well.'"

I said, "Julian, you are holy, you are holding my hand. (x2)
And so, All will be well, all will be well; all manner of things will be well."

She said, "Babygirl, do you not know, do you not know about:

• tenderness 
• friends
• the Spirit?
• it's only love that never ends and so,

all will be well, and all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

Song - We Shall All Be Known - Karisha Longaker (MaMuse)

Original by MaMuse:

Cover by Thrive East Bay

We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth
It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth

It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

- Words and music by Karisha Longaker of MaMuse

Pandemic (poem) by Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live. 

--Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

Living Charly

One of the most captivating and disturbing storylines to me is the backslide from some height of achievement. Remember the young adult book Flowers for Algernon, where Charly is a kid with a mental disability who takes some drug and becomes brilliant only to realize that the drug will unavoidably fail and leave him potentially worse off than before?

I fear my life is going to play out that story. I felt like an old soul as a kid. My family drama asked me to step up and take care of myself and my mother's emotions way too soon, and I felt valued and competent when I could do that. I spent the first 20 years of my life feeling confident and superior, together and driven and never second-guessing. Everything was black and white, and I was passionate about denouncing what I saw as wrong, unflinching in judgment about myself and everyone around me. In short, young. And terribly unwise and unkind, but feeling like I knew everything.

And so the last 20 years have been about learning to question myself and the easy first-reaction judgments. I've been reading Thinking Fast and Slow for the last 6 months. I can only read a few pages at a time, because it's an indictment of my youth and my continued first instincts. Our intuition is our System 1 brain in Daniel Kahneman's explanation of how our brains work, our feeling and judging brain that reasons with stories in which there is a hero and a villain (guess which one we all think we are?). That brain has built in shortcuts necessary for us to function minute by minute in a world of overwhelming stimuli that surrounds us. But those shortcuts have built-in errors, and if we don't slow down to question, to breathe, to zoom out of the myopia of our own first-person stories, then we literally don't see things correctly. Our System 2 brain can reason, considering multiple competing factors, but that brain is lazy and defers to System 1 unless pressed into service.

Which is all to say that I am facing a tough conversation with a member of my team on Monday, and I'm scared about how it will go. I have been picturing myself staying calm, centered, and curious. I've been re-reading Brene Brown's Dare to Lead. Clear is kind; unclear is unkind. The cave you fear hides the treasure you seek. So this conversation is a key to growth for me as a manager, as a leader, as an introvert tasked with connecting with a team every day.

And perhaps scariest of all, this is about what I can control and what I can't. I can't make someone like me, or improve performance, for that matter. I can't change the triangle dynamic of a dysfunctional reporting system for this unfortunate woman. I can't not be hurt and angry and feel powerless and disrespected when she cultivates the relationship with my boss's boss, who continually undermines and overlooks me. I can't control how this woman feels about me and my part in this mess. I can't control her interpretation of my actions or the assumptions she's making about me and my motives. I'm less nervous about that part. I can feel myself slowing down, breathing, staying grounded.

It's scarier to think about having this hard conversation and nothing changing. Either having to have it again or never getting to have it again and things going from bad to worse.

But I can only do what I can do. She is doing her best, and so am I. Perhaps we are not a good fit for each other. Maybe I haven't been brave. Maybe she feels ashamed that she can't do more and do better right now. Maybe all of that and more is true.

I'm guessing it comes down to me not valuing what she's contributing and her not feeling that her contribution is valued. There's a whole conversation about assumptions and goals that needs to happen and sounds really hard, and long, when what I am feeling is panic at how much there is to do in so little time.

And then there's the personal questioning of why I don't know more, feel more confident, when I used to live in that certainty and self-righteousness. And while I simultaneously understand that recognizing how much I don't know is wiser and kinder, I hate not trusting myself, not relying on my first instincts to be unerringly right and true and just.

And so middle age is arrived at.

I must remember: more love. My only job is to figure out how to best use people's strengths in the service of the bigger picture, how to support them in bringing their best. Brene Brown asks: "What does support look like?"

I hope I'm about to find out. Together.

Utterance of the Timeless Word (prayer) by Angela Herrera

You bring yourself before the sacred,
before the holy,
before what is ultimate and bigger than your lone life
bigger than your worries
bigger than your money problems
bigger than the fight you had with your sister and your aches and pains
bigger, even, than your whole being, your self who is

part of
and trapped within
and blessed with

a body that does what you want
and doesn’t do what you want
and wants all the wrong things
and wants all the right things... 

You stand at the edge of mystery,
at the edge of the deep,
with the light streaming at you,
and you can’t hide anything—not even from yourself,
when you stand there like that,
and then...what?

Maybe you call your pastor and say,

What is this?
What am I looking at?
What do I do?

And your pastor comes and stands at the edge with you
and looks over.
She can’t hide anything either, she thinks,
not even the fact that she doesn’t know the answer to your question,
and she wonders if you can tell. 

She thinks of all the generations who’ve come there before you
and cast words out ­toward the source of that light,
wanting to name it.
Somehow, she thinks to herself, the names stayed tethered to the aging world and got old
while the light remains timeless and burns without dimming.

Meanwhile,

the armful of worries you brought to the edge of mystery
have fluttered to your feet.
Unobscured by these, you shine back, light emanating unto light.
You, with your broken heart and your seeking,
you are the utterance of the timeless word.
The name of the Holy is pronounced
through your being.

To Sit in the Unknowing (prayer) by Katie Kandarian-Morris

By Katie Kandarian-Morris

O God of many names, the personal and mysterious,
We have come to a quiet time, an interior place,
a place for the deepening of spirit, the enrichment of soul.
We seek to know ourselves by knowing you.

Let us have the courage to sit in the unknowing,
To look for the answers even if they are to sit with our own questions,
To be willing to be authentic with ourselves,
To be ready to bring our face to the world.

Let us be willing to know others by welcoming their genuine features,
By welcoming them into the world,
By appreciating the beauty that comes from seeing wholeness and truth.

Let us sit in that quiet depth.

May it be so. AMEN and Blessed be.

Even This Is Enough (Prayer) - Vanessa Southern

So much undone.
So much to do.
So much to heal
in us and the world.
So much to acquire:
a meal
a healthy body—
a fit one—
a lover
a job
a better job
proof we have and are enough
just around the corner of now.

And up against it the reality of all that falls short and the limits of today.

We honor the limits:
If your body won’t do what it used to, for right now let it be enough.
If your mind won’t stop racing or can’t think of the word, let it be enough.
If you are here utterly alone and in despair, be all that here with us.
If today you cannot sing because your throat hurts or you don’t have the heart for music, be silent.
When the offering plate goes around if you don’t have money to give or the heart to give, let it pass.

The world won’t stop spinning on her axis if you don’t rise to all occasions today.
Love won’t cease to flow in your direction,
your heart won’t stop beating,
all hope won’t be lost.

You are part of the plan for this world’s salvation,
of that I have no doubt.
The world needs its oceans of people striving to be good
to carry us to the shores of hope and wash fear from the beach heads,
and cleanse all wounds so they can heal.
But oceans are big and I am sure there are parts that don’t feel up to the task of the whole some days.
Rest, if you must, then, like the swimmer lying on her back who floats,
or the hawk carried on cushions of air.
Rest in pews made to hold weary lives in space carved out for the doing of nothing much
but being.

Perhaps then you will feel in your bones,
in your weary heart,
the aching, healing sense that
this is enough—
even this.

That we are enough.
You are enough.
Enough.

For these and all the meditations of our hearts unspoken in this hour, I say, “Amen.”

The New Colossus (poem) by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


November 2, 1883

Anti-racism - Ta-Nehisi Coates

“These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates. Between the World and Me.

Anti-racism - Toni Morrison

You don’t waste your energy fighting the fever; you must only fight the disease. And the disease is not racism. It is greed and the struggle for power.Toni Morrison

New Paths (poem)

Grateful for new paths that emerge
from dark woods

at the edge of my frustration
and the end of what I know to do to help you,

we take the first steps --
me ahead --

you, knowing less,
behind.

I hold your hand,
still small,

so steady
for one so easily overwhelmed.

-- for Beckett

Prayer for Family Appreciation

May you never lose the excitement of storytelling to a mom listening with love glistening in her eyes.

May this mom never lose the love and pride of listening to your joy in storytelling.

May the lessons we learn playing board games prepare us for a life of cooperation and shared goals.

May I let in love that surrounds me like sunshine.

May the order we create with hard work clear our minds and our lives for the rich messiness of loving.

Civic Plaza Fountain

I tell you not to run
but your joy streaks ahead

to the water
surging from concrete

to meet you
hands up

laughter cresting
between the two of you

in the summer sun
spring breeze

singing this cool May morning
into family legend.

The Way It Is (poem) by Lynn Ungar

One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away,
and that the pit of unfulfilled longing in your heart
had gradually, and without your really noticing,
been filled in—patched like a pothole, not quite
the same as it was, but good enough.


And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless—
persistently, abundantly, miraculously—
exactly the way it is.

The Camels Speak (poem) by Lynn Ungar

Of course they never consulted us.
They were wise men, kings, star-readers,
and we merely transportation.
They simply loaded us with gifts
and turned us toward the star.
I ask you, what would a king know
of choosing presents for a child?
Had they ever even seen a baby
born to such simple folks,
so naked of pretension,
so open to the wind?
What would such a child care
for perfumes and gold? Far better
to have asked one born in the desert,
tested by wind and sand. We saw
what he would need: the gift
of perseverance, of continuing on the hard way,
making do with what there is,
living on what you have inside.
The gift of holding up under a burden,
of lifting another with grace, of kneeling
To accept the weight of what you must bear.
Our footsteps could have rocked him
with the rhythm of the road,
shown him comfort in a harsh land,
the dignity of continually moving forward.
But the wise men were not
wise enough to ask. They simply
left their trinkets and admired
the rustic view. Before you knew it
we were turned again toward home,
carrying men only half-willing
to be amazed. But never mind.
We saw the baby, felt him reach
for the bright tassels of our gear.
We desert amblers have our ways
of seeing what you chatterers must miss.
That child at heart knows something
about following a star. Our gifts are given.
Have no doubt. His life will bear
the print of who we are.

Ready - Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

"So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders." —Exodus 12:34

You’ll need to travel light.
Take what you can carry: a book, a poem,
a battered tin cup, your child strapped
to your chest, clutching your necklace
in one hot possessive fist.

So the dough isn’t ready. So your heart
isn't ready. You haven’t said goodbye
to the places where you hid as a child,
to the friends who aren’t interested in the journey,
to the graves you’ve tended.

But if you wait until you feel fully ready
you may never take the leap at all
and Infinity is calling you forth
out of this birth canal
and into the future’s wide expanse.

Learn to improvise flat cakes without yeast.
Learn to read new alphabets.
Wear God like a cloak
and stride forth with confidence.
You won’t know where you’re going

but you have the words of our sages,
the songs of our mothers, the inspiration
wrapped in your kneading bowl. Trust
that what you carry will sustain you
and take the first step out the door.

The Fountain - Denise Levertov

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

 
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

 
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,

frowned as she watched-but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.

The fountain is there among it’s scalloped
grey and green stones,
it is still there and always there

with it’s quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,

 
up and out through the rock.

Famous - Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   
which knew it would inherit the earth   
before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   
watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   
is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   
more famous than the dress shoe,   
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye. Copyright © 1995. 

Your Laughter - a poem for Dawn

I adapted this poem for my friend, Dawn Lunt, who passed in January 2017. The original Pablo Neruda Poem follows.

Your Laughter

For Dawn, after a poem by Pablo Neruda

January 30, 2017

You have taken a bit of light with you into the dark

Night of the universe

A bit of chocolate from our days

Salt from our stews –

Not bread, not air, for our lives go on –

Full and brisk and elemental

As seasons’ change.

But your laughter

Its echo

Its warmth

Lingers like candle smoke

The rose’s prick

The water’s chill

The salt in the caramel’s sweet –

The silver of your love

Ringing against our bell chamber hearts

That fill and empty again

As each wave of memory fills us with joy

And recedes into loss.

We do not struggle to honor you

To feel saturated with the light in which you lived your days

To see through your love-colored glasses

The changing earth

Our daily struggles

Our small triumphs of growth

And to feel again the gravity of your goodness

Your belief in the inevitability of our betterment

The impossible strength of your twisted hands.

And when we hear again your laugh

See the twinkle of your baby blues

In the brash vastness of the sky

The tap-dance of dew on the flagrant softness of petals

Your love enters again

Rising to seek the best in us

To open the doors of our belief in ourselves and the good we can do

To gouge beauty into us as water into canyons

Deep

Where only love can go.

Dawn, in this hour

When we listen for you

Your laughter opens

Us to life –

Its dark challenges

And extravagant blessings.

And if suddenly

You feel us lose hope,

Laugh, because your laughter

Will be for our hands

A fresh task

To weave love

Out of our life’s work

In all the ways we work –

Working together

And working to gather

The joy in each moment

As you did.

As you managed to do,

Right to the end.

Next to the volcanoes at sunrise,

Your laughter must raise

Its bubbly cascade,

And in the evening, Dawn,

We want your laughter like

The moment we were waiting for,

The quiet confirmation of the trick to your

Endless energy to add your light to the world,

Which echoes with the light of your love.

Laugh at the night,

At the day, at the moon,

Laugh at the congested

Streets of this city,

Laugh at these clumsy

Friends who love you,

But when we close our eyes

And open them,

When our steps go,

When our steps return,

Deny us chocolate,

Deny us salt,

Light, spring,

But never your laughter

For in that sound echoing in our ears

You will never die.

Your Laughter, Pablo Neruda

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die. 

Albuquerque Poems

On the final day of the Creative Placemaking Summit West, I learned of a website of poems written about places in Albuquerque: Poetic Routes.

So beautiful, and now I want to write poems about every corner of Albuquerque I love.

The next poem I need to write is the family history of Supper Rock, where my mother and father still congregate for mealtimes at different tables.

There is a family history (my grandfather's memory?) of piling into a horse-drawn wagon after the Baptist church service at Broadway and Central to trek up to Supper Rock for an evening (afternoon?) meal. It took the rest of the day. Such fun, such adventure. A whole day that reduces 50 years later to a 20-minute car ride and 15 minute walk around the park ringing what's left of Supper Rock like a pocket watch chain.

Map of Albuquerque

East is always up,
the Sandia mountains compassing the gravity of home.

Time sediments west from earliest memories
mining for Copper in the foothills

walking in gridded geometries toward Moon
a Collet Park childhood

a city bus ride's distance up Lomas
from Grant's middle school tomb.

Life didn't break open past Wyoming
until the University cranked open its creaky arms

to my college curiosity
where place and poetry and history and philosophy

took root in me
with mentorships that grew episodic

like cottonwoods
close to a river that I only discovered years later

coming home
to myself and a family that knew

the richness here
was the only food for DNA

shaped like lava
bedrock

sanded over with dust
decorated by ancient hands

whispering in winds
tickling volcanic escarpments

that laugh the stories
of our oldest neighbors.

Love began again
with the choice to start  a new family

in the caldera of an extinct fire
in the valley of friends

ringing my days and years
with reminders of who I have been

who I have said I wanted to become
in this place that leaves me no place

to
hide.

(Photo: Roberto E. Rosales)

litany - Mahogany L. Browne

litany

Mahogany L. Browne

I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holding me —Nina Simone

today i am a black woman in america
& i am singing a melody ridden lullaby
it sounds like:
              the gentrification of a brooklyn stoop
              the rent raised three times my wages
              the bodega and laundromat burned down on the corner
              the people on the corner
                          each lock & key their chromosomes
                          a note of ash & inquiry on their tongues

today i am a black woman in a hopeless state
i will apply for financial aid and food stamps
          with the same mouth i spit poems from
i will ask the angels of a creative god to lessen
          the blows
& i will beg for forgiveness when i curse
          the rising sun

today, i am a black woman in a body of coal
i am always burning and no one knows my name
i am a nameless fury, i am a blues scratched from
the throat of ms. nina—i am always angry
i am always a bumble hive of hello
i love like this too loudly, my neighbors
think i am an unforgiving bitter
            sometimes, i think my neighbors are right
            most times i think my neighbors are nosey

today, i am a cold country, a storm
brewing, a heat wave of a woman wearing
red pumps to the funeral of my ex-lover’s

today, i am a woman, a brown and black &
brew woman dreaming of freedom

today, i am a mother, & my country is burning
           and i forget how to flee
from such a flamboyant backdraft
                       —i’m too in awe of how beautiful i look
            on fire

Brown Girl Has Walked Into the Wild, Palms Open - Barbara Jane Reyes

Brown Girl Has Walked Into the Wild, Palms Open

Barbara Jane Reyes

  See how she lists. The body is bent as light, as wind will it.
And so you must tread light. Mind the rocks under foot. You must tread slow.
There has been drought; see where water has long ago troughed, has carved her.
  See how she branches, twisting, her many hands reaching.
Her roots also reach, sweetened from reaching. When fire arrives, she toughens.
She will slough away the thick. She will be slick, and dark beneath the rough.
She will mimic the fire her bones remember. Know her bones glisten.
  See how she rests. The body will fall, as time wills it.
See how it hollows, how her pieces return to earth.
 And from her thick trunk, mushrooms cluster—
   Her belly a nest of moss and poison.
When broken open, see what of her mother she has kept,
   what of her father, what of the stars.

United - Naomi Shihab Nye

United

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952


When sleepless, it’s helpful to meditate on mottoes of the states.
South Carolina, “While I breathe I hope.” Perhaps this could be
the new flag on the empty flagpole.
Or “I Direct” from Maine—why?
Because Maine gets the first sunrise? How bossy, Maine!
Kansas, “To the Stars through Difficulties”—
clackety wagon wheels, long, long land
and the droning press of heat—cool stars, relief.
In Arkansas, “The People Rule”—lucky you.
Idaho, “Let It Be Perpetual”—now this is strange.
Idaho, what is your “it”?
Who chose these lines?
How many contenders?
What would my motto be tonight, in tangled sheets?
Texas—“Friendship”—now boasts the Open Carry law.
Wisconsin, where my mother’s parents are buried,
chose “Forward.”
New Mexico, “It Grows As It Goes”—now this is scary.
Two dangling its. This does not represent that glorious place.
West Virginia, “Mountaineers Are Always Free”—really?
Washington, you’re wise.
What could be better than “By and By”?
Oklahoma must be tired—“Labor Conquers all Things.”
Oklahoma, get together with Nevada, who chose only
“Industry” as motto. I think of Nevada as a playground
or mostly empty. How wrong we are about one another.
For Alaska to pick “North to the Future”
seems odd. Where else are they going?

- 2016

Frederick Douglass - Robert Hayden

Frederick Douglass

Robert Hayden, 1913 - 1980


When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Unhappy 4th of July

Having seen the horrors in store for America under this presidency, it's hard to be happy this 4th of July. I'm struggling to remember why I love America. Why it's still great, not just a promise of something great but something actually worth celebrating.

I think about tolerance. How it's still the most respected value.  (But losing ground too quickly.)

I think about being a nation of immigrants, all of us here to make the best of our lives for ourselves and our loved ones. (And immediately think of the uneven playing field. How loans are given. How we are policed. How some of us are educated better than others. How housing and job opportunities still change based on color and accents and appearance.)

I think about freedom, how we laud it. (How millions of us - mostly people of color - are jailed. How we regularly march our troops into other countries to help them stay "free.")

I think about freedom of speech, how we can still protest, write unflattering articles, and not fear jail. (But it's only some of us who have no reason to fear. Undocumented people, people of color have to think hard about whether it's worth stepping into that spotlight of suspicion.)

It's still America, and there's still so much good here. But we are under attack on so many fronts. And our rights and privileges are being swept away so quickly.

I will remember that America is worth fighting for. That Americans are worth fighting for. That justice is worth fighting for.  That the future is worth fighting for.