When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations
(Friends United Press, 1985)
As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.
The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.
Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.
The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.
The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.
Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.
We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space between Us (Doubleday, 2008)
God of all gentleness, God of pure love,
you do not watch us from heights far above,
you are no tyrant, but patient and mild,
present with grace in the poor, in the child.
God of all mercy, may we be the ones
bearing your love to your daughters and sons,
not out of pity but humbly, with grace,
for in the poor we see your human face.
God of all justice, give us hearts to care,
hope to free prisoners of fear and despair,
courage to challenge the ways that oppress,
deep love to reach out to heal and to bless.
God of compassion, your Spirit now pour
into us all, for it’s we who are poor,
hungry for justice, for healing and grace,
and for full life for the whole human race.
Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 39, 2021
(The
first North American Christmas carol)*
Twas in
the moon of wintertime
When all the birds had fled,
That God, the Lord of all the earth,
Sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim,
And wond’ring hunters heard the hymn:
Jesus your King is born! Jesus is born!
Glory be to God on high!
The
earliest moon of wintertime
Is not so round and fair
As was the ring of glory
Around the infant there.
And when the shepherds then drew near
The angel voices rang out clear:
Jesus your King is born! Jesus is born!
Glory be to God on high!
O
children of the forest free,
The angels’ song is true.
The holy child of earth and heaven
Is born today for you.
Come, kneel before the radiant boy
Who brings you beauty, peace, and joy.
Jesus your King is born! Jesus is born!
Glory be to God on high!
*Written in 1640 in the Huron language by the Jesuit priest, Jean de Brebeuf. It was sung by the tribe until 1649 when the Iroquois destroyed the Jesuit mission, killed de Brebeuf, and drove the Hurons out. Many survivors fled to Quebec where the carol re-emerged and was translated into English and French. It is beloved throughout Canada today.
It was a time like this,
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss-
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.
It was time like this
of fear & lust for power,
license & greed and blight-
and yet the Prince of bliss
came into the darkest hour
in quiet & silent light.
And in a time like this
how celebrate his birth
when all things fall apart?
Ah! Wonderful it is
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.
Madeline L’Engle, a-poem-a-day-project.blogspot.com December
25, 2016
He was the strong, the silent one,
carrying no dry cliches
about aloneness as manliness.
The pain was a shard of ice in his heart;
it stilled his voice and dropped his gaze.
Quietly, he made his decision.
This girl: he would send her back home
without touching her. Save her from the
whispered looks, corrosive laughter — or worse.
Then came the dreams … the angel’s words …
he could recall them all as if etched in fire:
“Do not be afraid to take her as your wife …”
He loved her in his silence; she was quick
and unafraid. He matched her confidence
with trust. They would together find their way.
Four dreams defined his life:
Take her to wife, take them to Egypt,
return to Judea, settle in Nazareth.
Then he exits stage left and we are left
to see him, a silent man without pretense,
stolid and strong behind his Mary.
Barry Casey, journeywithjesus.net September 10, 2022
We’re long past racing downstairs
Christmas mornings breathless
for surprises under evergreen branches,
and our stockings now are the support kind
to hold things together south of our knees.
Michael Bublé may sing “White Christmas”
instead of Bing, and Amazon.com
may replace Woolworths on Black Fridays,
but we’ve moved on to richer gifts
of spouses and children, our own homes
glowing in holiday lights of December.
And over the now many miles of age
we still hold close the love of friends,
those we meet for coffee and conversation,
who check in with texts and morning emails,
those with whom our hearts have a history,
who make every day of every season
the most wonderful time of the year.
Edwin Romand, yourdailypoem.com December 25, 2021
Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.
In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.
We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.
We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.
It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.
On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.
We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation
Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.
Maya Angelou, a-poem-a-day-project.blogspot.com December 25, 2014
You know what I’m
like when I'm sick: I’d sooner
curse than cry. And people don’t often
know what they’re saying in the end.
Or I could die in my sleep.
So I’ll say it now. Here it is.
Don’t pay any attention
if I don’t get it right
when it is for real. Blame that
on terror and pain
or the stuff they’re shooting
into my veins. This is what I wanted to
sign off with. Bend
closer, listen, I love you.
Alden Nolan, Do Not Go Gentle: Poems for Funerals (Bloodaxe, 2003)
The Earth is yearning.
I can see it
in the strings of
lights,
so many more this
year
dangling so much
earlier.
I can hear it
in the music of the
season
playing before that
November feast.
I have seen it
in the Yuletide
movies
streaming in
summer, and even spring.
We are yearning afar
communally.
Yearning for calm,
an end to fear
Yearning for excitement
and wide-eyed joy
Yearning for warmth
and presence too.
This year, this lonely year.
We yearn for more,
A Light brighter
than those dangling
strands.
So let us go
to that moment in time
guided by starlight
to a stable far
deep in the night.
We go
seeking to hold
the intangible
made tangible.
We go, you and I,
and offer our
hearts
as manger,
a place
for the precious
Child to lay.
We prepare the space
the heart—the
manger
Allowing our hearts
to open
and soften,
making space
for the Child
that is
the Christ.
A cry rings out:
Emmanuel!
Into the embrace of the warm manger
the Blessed Mother
places the Child.
Arise, what feelings
as I cradle the
divine Child.
Shall my heart be touched
as his tiny hand
reaches out?
In his tender gaze
are offers divine:
love
peace
joy
hope
comfort
healing
renewal
wholeness.
I accept the gifts
in the manger of my
heart
and dare to realize
the Light of the
World
is holding my
heart.
Rebecca Ruiz, ignationspirituality.com accessed on December 8,
2022
Toward the end she only wore
her brown ones, the Velcro not quite
holding anymore; toes scuffed
from Wednesday ballroom class,
sand for melting snow embedded
in the soles. She had others:
concert pumps, her shearling slippers,
flip-flops for the Cape. These stayed
lined up beneath her dresses, expectant,
but her husband always fetched
the brown ones, helped her
to the armchair, eased the crew socks
past her bunions, rubbed
her vein-mapped calves, slipped
the left one then the right one on
the way a kindergarten teacher helps
a scared new pupil into her galoshes; then
he placed each foot, each gorgeous foot,
against the wheelchair’s rests, and
wheeled her deferentially
to the dining hall for breakfast.
Frannie Lindsay, If Mercy (The Word Works, 2016)
They knelt down and
paid him homage.
Then, opening
their treasure chests,
they offered
him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
—Matthew
2.11
I offer the gift of my gold,
my generosity.
May all that I spend be done in faith.
May every dollar reflect my love for you
and your will.
I offer the gift of my frankincense,
my prayerfulness.
May all I do be in mindfulness of your presence.
May I treat every person with reverence,
every moment with gratitude,
every action with trust in your grace.
I offer the gift of my myrrh,
my mortality, my being.
I shall one day die;
meanwhile my life belongs to you, not me.
May I spend my short time in this life
with love and humility.
I willingly surrender my life to you,
that I may enter into the new year
not as a self-protected individual,
but as a generous, trusting, joyful member
of the Body of your Love.
Here. Receive me.
Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 31.2921
Pick a number from one to ten. Okay, now multiply that
number
by nine. You will have a two-digit number. Add those two digits.
Now subtract five from that number. Take that number and find
its corresponding letter in the alphabet (1=A, 2=B, etc.). Now
think of a country that begins with that letter. Now name an
animal that begins with the last letter of the country. Finally, name
a fruit that begins with the last letter of that animal.
Kevin Griffin, Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange (Pearl
Editions, 2007)
December twenty-first
we gather at the white Church festooned
red and green, the tree flashing
green-red lights beside the altar.
After the children of Sunday School
recite Scripture, sing songs,
and scrape out solos,
they retire to dress for the finale,
to perform the pageant
again: Mary and Joseph kneeling
cradleside, Three Kings,
shepherds and shepherdesses. Their garments
are bathrobes with mothholes,
cut down from the Church's ancestors.
Standing short and long,
they stare in all directions for mothers,
sisters and brothers,
giggling and waving in recognition,
and at the South Danbury
Church, a moment before Santa
arrives with her ho-hos
and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark
of whole silence, God
enters the world as a newborn again.
Donald Hall, poemhunter.com January 3, 2003
Daybreak until nightfall,
he sat by his wife at the hospital
while chemotherapy dripped
through the catheter into her heart.
He drank coffee and read
the Globe. He paced; he worked
on poems; he rubbed her back
and read aloud. Overcome with dread,
they wept and affirmed
their love for each other, witlessly,
over and over again.
When it snowed one morning Jane gazed
at the darkness blurred
with flakes. They pushed the IV pump
which she called Igor
slowly past the nurses' pods, as far
as the outside door
so that she could smell the snowy air.
Donald Hall, poemhunter.com April 24, 2015
(An Incomplete List)
Don’t let your cell phone rest
against your ear or any other body part. Don’t use the same
ear
for every conversation. Don’t use your cell phone
while you’re driving
since it must continually reconnect with antennas,
which uses more power,
and the signal is reflected by the metal around you.
All of the above doubles the chances for salivary gland
anomalies, gliomas
and acoustic tumors.
Don’t own a cell phone.
Never leave the house
without a cell phone
because you never know when you’ll
need someone.
Digitally Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECTs)
constantly emit radiation.
Try never to use one while you are using one.
Don’t use computers, printers, iPhones, iTouches,
BlackBerries, etc.
Wireless signals are a source of electromagnetic
radiation.
Don’t doubt the truth of this; Google it for yourself.
Don’t ever use the Internet.
Every search you execute exposes you to viruses.
Even if you don’t have wireless
service, don’t leave your Wifi setting
in the on position;
the device will emit electromagnetic energy
in a continuous search
for the nearest available router.
Don’t own a computer.
Try never to breathe on Ozone Alert days.
Don’t stand within twenty feet of an
operating microwave.
Don’t believe you’re safe.
Set your cell phone inside your microwave
to test it for radiation leakage. Call it
with another cell phone. If you can hear it ringing,
it means that microwaves can pass through the walls
of your microwave oven.
Don’t microwave
your cell phone.
Don’t own a microwave.
Don’t forget to microwave leftovers to kill bacteria. Try not
to eat leftovers.
Don’t waste food.
If you can help it, don’t eat.
Don’t own a plasma TV
which generate high levels
of dirty electricity,
linked to fatigue,
headaches,
difficulty concentrating
and cardiac symptoms
in
sensitive people
(known as electrohypersensitivity).
Don’t forget to watch programs on your plasma TV about
household safety.
Don’t, if you can avoid them, own a television or
a home.
Don’t put your feet up while relaxing; we don’t know why yet,
just don’t.
Don’t forget to try to relax.
Don’t do anything stressful.
Don’t forget that stress is a sign that you are probably
living.
Don’t wake up; don’t sleep.
Don’t do anything that feels good.
Don’t do anything that feels bad.
Don’t do anything.
Don’t forget to breathe.
Don’t forget to eat vegetables.
Don’t forget to remember that the fertilizers they use to grow
vegetables can leave
trace amounts of carcinogenic nitrates in those salads you
eat.
Don’t forget there’s nothing you can do about any of this.
This poem is already outdated.
This poem will never get old.
Don’t try to avoid reading this; it could save you.
Don’t ever read this poem … it’s a proven killer.
Jeff Vande Zande, Rattle #36, Winter 2006
Jason Needly found his father, old Ab, at work
at the age of eighty in the topmost
tier of the barn. "Come down!" Jason called.
"You got no business up there at your age."
And his father descended, not by a ladder,
there being none, but by inserting his fingers
into the cracks between the boards and climbing
down the wall.
And
when he was young
and some account and strong and knew
nothing of weariness, old man Milt Wright,
back in the days they called him "Steady,"
carried the rastus plow on his shoulder
up the high hill to his tobacco patch, so
when they got there his mule would be fresh,
unsweated, and ready to go.
Early
Rowanberry,
for another, bought a steel-beam breaking plow
at the store in Port William and shouldered it
before the hardly-believing watchers, and carried it
the mile and a half home, down through the woods
along Sand Ripple.
"But
the tiredest my daddy
ever got," his son, Art, told me one day
"was when he carried fifty rabbits and a big possum
in a sack on his back up onto the point yonder
and out the ridge to town to sell them at the store."
"But why," I asked, "didn't he hitch a team
to the wagon and haul them up there by the road?"
"Well," Art said, "we didn't have but two
horses in them days, and we spared them
every way we could. A many a time I've seen
my daddy or grandpa jump off the wagon or sled
and take the end of a singletree beside a horse."
Wendell Berry, Leavings (Counterpoint Press, 2010)
Have you tried
rose hydrosol? Smokey quartz
in a steel bottle
of glacial water? Tincture
drawn from the stamens
of daylilies grown
on the western sides
of two-story homes?
Pancreas of toad?
Deodorant paste?
Have you removed
your metal fillings? Made peace
with your mother? With all
the mothers you can? Or tried
car exhaust? Holding your face
to the steaming kettle?
Primal screamed into
a down-alternative pillow
in a wood while tree-bathing?
Have you finally stopped
shoulding all over yourself?
Has your copay increased?
Right hip stiffened?
Has the shore risen
as you closed up the shop?
And have you put your weight
behind its glass door to keep
the ocean out? All of it?
Rang the singing bowl
next to the sloping toilet?
Mainlined lithium?
Colored in another mandala?
Have you looked
yourself in the mirror
and found the blessed halo
of a ring light in each iris?
Have you been content enough
being this content? Whose
shop was it?
Solmaz Sharif, Customs (Graywolf Press, 2022)
The first girl in generations,
you came when the century clicked
from nines to zeroes to plus one.
Capped on a pallet, you flexed
your toes and let us count
your fingernails.
We
studied you
as our particular event,
our small surprise, our bonus.
Months earlier, I prayed
that you'd be born intact
and healthy, and you were.
Today I wish you beauty, grace,
intelligence—the commonplace
grandfatherly clichés....
What
makes us crave for those
we love such bounties of perfection?
Life, just life, is never
miracle enough no matter
how we try to church ourselves....
Squirming in my arms, you save me
from my tyranny of dreams
with nothing but your version of a kiss
and the sure, blind love of innocence.
Samuel Hazo, The Song of the Horse (Autumn House Press,
2008)
When I was a kid I listened to the radio late at night. I tuned it
low as I could and put my ear right up next to it because my dad
didn't like it. He'd say, "Turn off that radio. It's after midnight!"
No matter how low I tuned it he could still hear, from down the
hall and through two closed doors. He was tired. It had been a
long day and this was just one more thing, the final thing, keep-
ing him from the sleep, the absolute dead silence he wanted. As
for me, whatever music I was listening to, some rock station way
down on the border, probably, "100,000 watts of pure power,"
has become even more faint over the years. But I can still hear it.
Louis Jenkins, Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005 (Will O’ the Wisp Books, 2009)
One November
a week before Thanksgiving
the Ohio river froze
and my great uncles
put on their coats
and drove the turkeys
across the ice
to Rosiclare
where they sold them
for enough to buy
my grandmother
a Christmas doll
with blue china eyes
I like to think
of the sound of
two hundred turkey feet
running across to Illinois
on their way
to the platter
the scrape of their nails
and my great uncles
in their homespun leggings
calling out gee and haw and git
to them as if they
were mules
I like to think of the Ohio
at that moment
the clear cold sky
the green river sleeping
under the ice
before the land got stripped
and the farm got sold
and the water turned the color
of whiskey
and all the uncles
lay down
and never got up again
I like to think of the world
before some genius invented
turkeys with pop-up plastic
thermometers
in their breasts
idiot birds
with no wildness left in them
turkeys that couldn't run the river
to save their souls
Mary Mackey, Breaking the Fever (Marsh Hawk Press, 2006)
Our friends' wedding:
I'd lied, called it a funeral
to get army leave
so I could be with you.
It was surprise, a present
and your blush of pleasure
cheered me like a crowd.
So here we are on the step
above 'the happy couple'
who will one day divorce-
looking into the future
which is now.
Ten friends together
in that photograph.
Fifty years on
and four are dead.
Who will be next?
Who will be last
and put out the light?
It's time to tell you again
how much I loved the girl
who blushed her welcome.
Forgive my trespasses.
Stay close. Hold my hand.
C. K. Stead, The Red Tram (Auckland University Press,
New Zealand)
i only want to
be there to kiss you
as you want to be kissed
when you need to be kissed
where i want to kiss you
cause its my house and i plan to live in it
i really need to hug you
when i want to hug you
as you like to hug me
does this sound like a silly poem
i mean its my house
and i want to fry pork chops
and bake sweet potatoes
and call them yams
cause i run the kitchen
and i can stand the heat
i spent all winter in
carpet stores gathering
patches so i could make
a quilt
does this really sound
like a silly poem
i mean i want to keep you
warm
and my windows might be dirty
but its my house
and if i can't see out sometimes
they can't see in either
english isn't a good language
to express emotion through
mostly i imagine because people
try to speak english instead
of trying to speak through it
i don't know maybe it is
a silly poem
i'm saying it's my house
and i'll make fudge and call
it love and touch my lips
to the chocolate warmth
and smile at old men and call
it revolution cause what's real
is really real
and i still like men in tight
pants cause everybody has some
thing to give and more
important need something to take
and this is my house and you make me
happy
so this is your poem
Nikki Giovanni, ralphlevy.com accessed on October
23, 2022
He is a hard one to write a poem about. Like Napolean.
Hannibal. Genghis Khan. Already so large in history. To do it
right, I have to sit down with him. At a place of his own
choosing. Probably a steakhouse. We take a table in a corner.
But people still recognize him, come up and slap him on the
back, say how much they enjoyed studying about him in school
and ask for his autograph. After he eats, he leans back and
lights up a cigar and asks me what I want to know. Notebook in
hand, I suggest that we start with the Little Big Horn and work
our way back. But I realize I have offended him. That he
would rather take it the other way around. So he rants on
about the Civil War, the way west, the loyalty of good soldiers
and now and then twists his long yellow hair with his fingers.
But when he gets to the part about Sitting Bull, about Crazy
Horse, he develops a twitch above his right eye, raises his
finger for the waiter, excuses himself and goes to the restroom
while I sit there along the bluffs with the entire Sioux nation,
awaiting his return.
David Shumate, High Water Mark (University of Pittsburg
Press, 2004)
At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people -
carry-on bags and paperbacks -
that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain
we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of sky divers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common spot
for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.
It's just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman
passes through her daughter's hair...
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below...
well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2001)
Things weren’t very specific
when I was in labor,
yet everything was
there, suddenly: all that
my body had known,
even things I’d only been
reminded of occasionally,
as when a stranger’s scent
had reminded me
of someone I’d known
in the distant past. The few
men I’d loved but didn’t
marry. The time, living
alone in Albuquerque,
when I fainted in the kitchen
one morning before work
and woke up on the floor,
covered in coffee. Finally,
it was coming. It was all moving
forward. Finally, it was all going
to pass through me. It was
beginning to happen
and it was all going to happen
in one single night.
No more lingering
in the adolescent pools
of memory, no more giving it
a little more time to see
if things would get better
or worse. No more moving
from one place to the next.
Finally, my body was all
that had ever been given
to me, it was all I had,
and I sweated through it
in layers, so that when,
in the end, I was finally
standing outside myself
and watching, I could see
that what brought me
into the world was pulling
you into the world,
and I could see that my body
was giving you up
and giving you to me,
and where in my body
there were talents, there
were talents, and where
there were no talents,
there would be scars.
Carrie Fountain, Instant Winner, (Penguin, 2004)
Bless
those who curse you,
pray for
those who abuse you.
—Luke
6.28
The more monstrous a person's evil,
the more evil their monsters,
and the more unable they are to overcome them.
They need you.
They need you to stand beside them and pray
as they can't, pray for their redemption.
If you want peace in the world,
if you want justice for all the oppressed,
for the abused and enslaved and trafficked,
then you want most of all
the redemption of all wrongdoers.
God's great justice is not revenge.
That's too cheap, too human, too small.
No, God's justice is actual harmony
and fullness of life for everybody.
Not payback, that endless loop,
but transformation (which is harder).
Pray for the bad guys,
even the tyrants and torturers, that with love
God will wrench them out of their hell
and deliver us all.
Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net November 4, 2022
I used to call them
Morning Doves, those birds
with breasts the rosy color
of dawn who coo us awake
as if to say love . . .
love . . . in the morning.
But when the book said
Mourning Doves instead
I noticed their ash-gray feathers,
like shadows
on the underside
of love.
When the Dark Angel comes
let him fold us in wings
as soft as these birds’,
though the speckled egg
hidden deep in his nest
is death.
Linda Pastan, chronicillnessliving.blog, May 5, 2020
He comes every day to eat lunch and sit
with her in the sunroom. Sometimes he reads
letters out loud from their children or friends;
sometimes he reads the paper as she sleeps.
One day the staff makes her favorite cake
to celebrate their anniversary,
and he tells how, to buy her ring, he worked
months of overtime at the factory,
so she thought he was seeing someone else.
"As if I would look at other women
when I have Pearl," he says, shaking his head.
She begins to cry and tells him, "You're sweet,
but I miss my husband." He pats her hand.
"I know," he says, "It's all right. Try some cake."
Joseph Mills, Love and Other Collisions (Press 53,
2010)
Walk gently on this earth with purposeful steps
You share this space with seven billion human
beings
And countless other precious life forms
Just like you
They all want to be happy
Just like you
They all need love
We’re not going to survive unless we walk
Gently on this earth together,
Until we touch something in others that
Feels just like the shards of our own pain,
The fluttering warmth of our own joy,
Until we sew their wounds into our hearts
And seal it with our own skin
Kaveri Patel, tarabranch.com June 10, 2022
Sometimes when I catch myself
judging someone else—
a stranger or perhaps a beloved—
I imagine my son and father watching me,
not looking down from above,
I imagine them looking out from inside me.
I don’t worry I am disappointing them—
I feel certain they would be generous with me.
See how human she is, they might say,
loving me despite my humaness,
because of my humanness.
In that moment of imagining,
I feel myself soften,
feel my heart unfurl like a new leaf in spring,
feel how possible it is to be generous
with the humanness of myself and others
and the relief it brings.
In that moment, it is easy to be alive.
Easy to notice my annoyance
and be gentle with the self who gets annoyed.
Easy to touch my palm to my heart
and know it as the palm of my son,
the palm of my father,
reminding me how truly I want to walk it,
this path of compassion.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com July 17,
2022
The flu vaccine cannot
give you the flu, I tell him.
It's dead virus, there's
nothing alive about it.
It can't make you sick.
That's a myth.
But if we bury it in
the grassy knoll
of your shoulder,
an inch under the stratum
corneum, as sanctioned by
your signature
in a white-coated ceremony
presided over by
my medical assistant
and then mark the grave
with a temporary
non-stick headstone,
the trivalent spirit
of that vaccine
has a 70 to 90 percent
chance of warding off
the Evil One,
and that's the God's
honest truth.
Adam Possner, MD/JAMA December 5, 2012 vol. 308 (21)2178
Copyright 2012, American Medical Association
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 anyone among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.
Tony Hoagland, Sweet Ruin (University of Wisconsin
Press, 1999)
