Light in Darkness

            The light shines in the darkness,
           and the darkness can not overcome it.

                         —John 1.5


And the light is the life of all people.
In Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan,
the light shines and the darkness can't overcome it.
In those who trust, who hope, who heal, who bear witness,
the light shines.
Even in those who fear whoever's not White,
in those who despair of democracy,
or those who consider women as objects,
still, somehow, the light shines.
In days when our love falters and our hope loses its footing
the light shines.
In our deepest apathy and unbelief,
in our worst sin, still the light shines in the darkness.
The light that is the life of all people is our salvation,
shining in the unknown, shining in the unseeable,
now and always, still shining.
Still. Shining.

 

Steve Garness-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 27, 2023 

Good Is the Flesh

Good is the flesh that the Word has become,
good is the birthing, the milk in the breast,
good is the feeding, caressing and rest,
good is the body for knowing the world,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
good is the body, from cradle to grave,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body, from cradle to grave,
growing and aging, arousing, impaired,
happy in clothing, or lovingly bared,
good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
longing in all, as in Jesus, to dwell,
glad of embracing, and tasting, and smell,
good is the body, for good and for God,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

 

Brian Wren, Vision and Viewpoint newsletter, December 25, 2023 

The Light Came Down

There is a light
Bright star shining
In the dark night
Old tales come true

All of our fears
Hopes and prayers
He has heard
And answered us

The light came down
Cast the darkness away
He appeared
A helpless child
The light of god came down

There is a light
A new day dawning
Old things pass
All things made new

Prophets have spoken
All He would accomplish
When the light of God
Would dwell with men

The light came down
Cast the darkness away
He appeared
A helpless child
The light of god came to save us
To the world that He made us
O' Lord and savior
Alleluia

 

Josh Garrels, songlyrcs.com accessed on December 24, 203

Emmanuel

So often it seems we are so in the mood for Christmas,
but then something awful happens
and it changes everything.
But this is backwards.
Difficulties are constant: awful things happen—
and then Christmas comes along and changes everything.

This is the reason for the season.
“Because these days are dark,” the Beloved says,
“I come to be with you.
I see the pain, the loneliness, the despair.
I feel already the splinters of the manger, the nails.
And—therefore— I have come to be with you.”

Don't be afraid of the dark days, the broken days,
the hard days, the blank days.
This is where Christmas happens.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 18, 2023

The Meeting

After so long an absence
       At last we meet again:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
       Or does it give us pain?

The tree of life has been shaken,
       And but few of us linger now,
Like the Prophet's two or three berries
       In the top of the uttermost bough.

We cordially greet each other
       In the old, familiar tone;
And we think, though we do not say it,
       How old and gray he is grown!

We speak of a Merry Christmas
       And many a Happy New Year
But each in his heart is thinking
       Of those that are not here.

We speak of friends and their fortunes,
       And of what they did and said,
Till the dead alone seem living,
       And the living alone seem dead.

And at last we hardly distinguish
       Between the ghosts and the guests;
And a mist and shadow of sadness
       Steals over our merriest jests.

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, public domain

Don't Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

 

Mary Oliver, best-poems.net accessed on December 17, 2023

The Spirit of the Lord

Just as Isaiah
The prophet has foretold
A sprout from Jesse’s root
Into a tree shall grow
This sprout shall bloom
Into a mighty tree of life
Its fruit will feed us
And its source will be our light

The Spirit of the Lord
Will come to dwell with us
A righteous judge
A mighty counselor
And by the word
Of his everlasting power
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe

For in him all the fullness
Of God was pleased to dwell
And through him
To reconcile all things to himself
Have you ever seen
A wolf and a lamb lie down together?
Can there ever be peace like this
Between enemies?
Can there ever be peace like this
Between enemies?
Would God dare to descend
To come live with his enemies?

The Spirit of the Lord
Will come to dwell with us
Put on flesh
Make peace for us with God
And by the word
Of his everlasting power
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe

Then I saw heaven open
And behold
A white horse with its rider
Righteousness his clothes
With eyes that burn like fire
And a crown atop his head
Robes dipped in blood
That he himself willingly shed
Yet I had no doubt
I still recognized his face
Son of God, Son of Man
Glorious grace

King of kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God
King of kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God
King of kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God
King of Kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God

The Spirit of the Lord
Has come to dwell with us
Behold, the Lamb of God
Makes all things new
And by the word
Of his everlasting power
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
And he shall reign
Forever and ever

 

Kate Ribera, written for her church, Trinity Church, Seattle, Washington

Bypass

When they cracked open your chest, parting
the flesh at the sternum and sawing

right through your ribs, we'd been married
only five weeks. I had not yet kissed

into memory those places they raided
to save your life. I could only wait

outside, in the public lobby
of private nightmares

while they pried you apart, stopped
your heart's beating, and iced you

down. For seven hours a machine
breathed for you, in and out. God,

seeing you naked in ICU minutes
after the surgery ... your torso swabbed

a hideous antiseptic yellow
around a raw black ladder of stitches

and dried blood. Still unconscious,
you did the death rattle on the gurney.

"His body is trying to warm itself up,"
they explained, to comfort me.

 

Susan-Kelly DeWitt, Greatest Hits 1983-2002 (Pudding House Publications)

Flying Over West Texas at Christmas

Oh, little town far below
with a ruler line of a road running through you,
you anonymous cluster of houses and barns,
miniaturized by this altitude
in a land as parched as Bethlehem
might have been somewhere around the year zero—

a beautiful song should be written about you
which choirs could sing in their lofts
and carolers standing in a semicircle
could carol in front of houses topped with snow.

For surely some admirable person was born
within the waffle-iron grid of your streets,
who then went on to perform some small miracles,
placing a hand on the head of a child
or shaking a cigarette out of the pack for a stranger.

But maybe it is best not to compose a hymn
or chisel into tablets the code of his behavior
or convene a tribunal of men in robes to explain his words.

Let us not press the gold leaf of his name
onto a page of vellum or hang his image from a nail.
Better to fly over this little town with nothing
but the hope that someone visits his grave

once a year, pushing open the low iron gate
then making her way toward him
through the rows of the others
before bending to prop up some flowers before the stone.

Billy Collins, Aimless Love (Random House, 2013) 

Toward the Light

Too often our answer to the darkness
      is not running toward Bethlehem
            but running away.
We ought to know by now that we can't see
      where we're going in the dark.
Running away is rampant . . .
      separation is stylish:
            separation from mates, from friends, from self.
Run and tranquilize,
      don't talk about it,
      avoid.
Run away and join the army
      of those who have already run away.
When are we going to learn that Christmas Peace
      comes only when we turn and face the darkness?
Only then will we be able to see
      the Light of the World.

Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem (The Westminster Press, 1987)

Good News

             The spirit of the Holy One is upon me,
           because God has anointed me;
           God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed.
                         —Isaiah 61.1


Beloved,
may your Spirit flow through me today,
that all I do and say may be good news to the poor,
offering power to the oppressed, healing to the broken,
courage to the despairing, freedom to the captive.
May all I do bring light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death.
May I be good news to all those
who hunger for gentleness and respect.
Anoint me with your kindness, that I may offer kindness
even to those who do not ask it,
your love to those who do not understand it.
May I be a faithful vessel,
for it is your Spirit, not my effort, that blesses.
By that Spirit, send me, God,
to bear your grace to the world.
Amen.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 12, 2023

Into This World

 Into this world, this demented inn

in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,

Christ comes uninvited.

But because he cannot be at home in it,

because he is out of place in it,

and yet he must be in it,

His place is with the others for whom

there is no room.

His place is with those who do not belong,

who are rejected by power,

because they are regarded as weak,

those who are discredited,

who are denied status of persons,

who are tortured, bombed and exterminated.

With those for whom there is no room,

Christ is present in this world.

 

Thomas Merton

Our Fathers

Our fathers, who lived all their lives on earth—
are going now. They have given us all
we need, and when we asked, they gave us more.

Their names are beautiful to us, holy
as the names of stars, as familiar
as the roads we traveled, falling asleep

on the way from one farm to another.
Their kingdoms were small; they were never
interested in more than one homestead,

and as for evil: although they could not
keep it from, us, they tried to keep us from
temptation, though we were like all children

and wanted our own power and glory,
world without end, forever and amen.

 

Joyce Sutphen, After Words (Red Dragonfly Press, 2013)

Knots

Trying to tie my shoes, clumsy, not able to work out
the logic of it, fumbling, as my father stands there,
his anger growing over a son who can’t even do
this simplest thing for the first time, can’t even manage
the knot to keep his shoes on—You think someone’s
going to tie your shoes for you the rest of your life?—
No, I answer, forty-five years later, tying my shoe,
hands trembling with this memory. My father
and all those years of childhood not being able to work out
how he loved me, a knot so tight it has taken all my life
to untie.

 

Joseph Stroud, Of This World (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) 

Waiting

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
but of course it's not. It's Advent,
the Season of Not Yet, a time of waiting.
Some dreams you work for;
for others you can only wait.
We can't hurry The Time, we can only wait for it.
Sometimes the poet searches for the word;
sometimes they can only wait for it to come.

At the end of the musical piece,
just before the final note— the musicians pause,
for in that little pause the music arrives.
The magician knows, just before removing the veil
to reveal the amazing feat, just then—
… to wait a moment,
for it is in that moment that your heart leaps up.

In Advent we pin our hearts on what we're waiting for,
and we rest our hearts in the waiting itself,
for in waiting is the meeting of the power of our longing
and our powerlessness, and there,
in the openness, in that magical blank space,
mysteries often happen.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 5, 2023

Thanks for Remembering Us

The flowers sent here by mistake,

signed with a name that no one knew,

are turning bad. What shall we do?

Our neighbor says they're not for her,

and no one has a birthday near.

We should thank someone for the blunder.

Is one of us having an affair?

At first we laugh, and then we wonder.

 

The iris was the first to die,

enshrouded in its sickly-sweet

and lingering perfume. The roses

fell one petal at a time,

and now the ferns are turning dry.

The room smells like a funeral,

but there they sit, too much at home,

accusing us of some small crime,

like love forgotten, and we can't

throw out a gift we've never owned.

 

Dana Gioia, loc.gov November 14, 2023 

Waiting

The siren in the distance, then near,
Chester on a gurney wheeled to the raised hatch.

Eleanor then, in the waiting room, waiting.
The doctor didn’t come and didn’t come.

Neighbor Leon, leaning against the stone wall outside,
helping to wait.
His wife Eileen too, her bent wrist on one hip,
her old fingers laced with his,
their bow legged white dog came along.

Farm clothes and faces lined with practiced resignation,
the old boar, the old cow in the pasture,
they all knew how to wait.

At home, the two wingback chairs in the parlor waited.
Baggy trousers on the wash line,
goats napping in the dusty yard.

The heart attack that stopped for a visit,
now down the road to someone else.

At home, his silver razor on the porcelain sink,
the shave cream, the mirror.

Eleanor touched his smooth bare head,
his Picasso face,
her voice examining to get a sense of him.
She touched his chest inside his shirt, his palms
to see if he had much grip.

In the late afternoon, he gazed from the window to the blue mountain.
It looked different. From now on, everything different.

 

John Ziegler, autumnpoetrydaily.com July 12, 2023

Song

At her Junior High School graduation,

she sings alone

in front of the lot of us—

 

her voice soprano, surprising,

almost a woman's. It is

the Our Father in French,

 

the new language

making her strange, out there,

fully fledged and

 

ready for anything. Sitting

together—her separated

mother and father—we can

 

hear the racket of traffic

shaking the main streets

of Jersey City as she sings

 

Deliver us from evil,

and I wonder can she see me

in the dark here, years

 

from belief, on the edge

of tears. It doesn't matter. She

doesn't miss a beat, keeps

 

in time, in tune, while into

our common silence I whisper,

Sing, love, sing your heart out!

 

Eamon Grennan, Relations: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1998) 

At the Lake House

Wind and the sound of wind—
across the bay a chainsaw revs
and stalls. I’ve come here to write,

but instead I’ve been thinking
about my father, who, in his last year,
after his surgery, told my mother

he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried
when the other woman left him,
that his time with her

had made him happier than anything
he’d ever done. And my mother,
who cooked and cleaned for him

all those years, cared for him
after his heart attack, could not
understand why he liked the other

woman more than her,
but he did. And she told me
that after he died she never went

to visit his grave—not once.
You think you know them,
these creatures robed

in your parents’ skins. Well,
you don’t. Any more than you know
what the pines want from the wind,

if the lake’s content with this pale
smear of sunset, if the loon calls
for its mate, or for another.

 

Jon Loomis, The Mansion of Happiness (Oberlin College Press, 2016)

A Blessing

     May the peace of deep belonging settle upon you,
the abundance of life's goodness surround you,
the warmth of divine delight burn within you.

     May the light of gentle wisdom guide you,
the courage of forgiveness set you free,
the wings of gratitude lift you.

     May your listening deepen,
your trust in grace flourish,
your joy be unleashed.

     Beloved, the Mystery envelops you,
the Wonder embraces you,
the breath of life flows through you always.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net September 27, 2023

Seeing Tina in the Produce Section at Safeway

A mini thunder rumbles.
A mist strokes the green onions,
sweeps across the delicate
acreage of parsley,
the lettuce’s skirts,
the cabbage's stiff petticoats.

Rain is sluicing down outside the store.
Then I see you striding towards me,
beads of water in your hair.

It’s as if you'd dropped out
of a cloudburst.
Only thunder
could introduce you again
into my life. You always preferred
drama to my quiet world
in high school of native
California plants.

I gather myself as the showers
in the spinach abruptly end.
“Hi,” you say sidling up,
fingering a scallion.
“You look good.”

Your glasses perch
atop your strawberry blonde hair,
every strand in place. Mine is as mussed
as a carrot’s. I can’t believe
we dated.

Casually you mention
you’ve just returned
from auditions in L.A.
—and teasing, boast
how your agent's
created more famous actresses
than my beloved Luther Burbank's
created varieties
of fruit. Always
the flirt, you
wink

just before Mr. Handsome
approaches, slides his paw
around your waist. You smile,
and the two of you push your cart
out of my life.

I follow, watching.
You turn around, throw me a kiss
just before leaving the store.

I turn my attention back to piling
pyramids of Fuji apples, their faces
as rosy and as luminous
as I remember yours
long ago. I can’t wait to get home
to my lovely wife
and precious baby daughter
to tell them about you.
Ah, I love my small
world….

Christine Klocek-Lim, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily (November 20, 2023)

A Prayer for Two Congregations

 Lord, bless our friends and all the members of Grace Methodist Church. We give thanks that the members of Grace are experiencing the excitement of beginning something new together. Already they have ministries in place that will make a difference in the lives of others.

Now that decisions have been made, may we extend forgiveness to each other and experience healing. The issues on which we disagree are important, but they stand alongside our mutual love and the shared history of serving Christ and community.

They will be in our prayers during illness and distress.

Open opportunities for us to once again work together in spreading the word and work of Christ. Lead our congregations to life-changing spirituality, life-saving service to others, and life-sustaining faith, hope, and love.

Let Scripture be our guide:

“Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God . . . Indeed this command comes to us from Christ himself: that he who loves God must also love his brother and sister.” (1 John 4: 7-8, 21)

The Old Man and the Motorcycle

The old man had inoperable cancer.
The old man's wife was dead
And the old man's kids didn't like him,

So the old man sold most everything
And bought a motorcycle
And the old man got back

To the backroads, to the roads he'd so
Enjoyed as a young man,
And the old man figured what the hell,

I'm sick I don't have long I might
As well die falling off this thing
Somewhere; this affordable, this moving,

This very roaring thing on these last roads.

Liam Rector, The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago Press, 2006)

Dreams and Nightmares

Last night as I lay sleeping,
   I had a dream so fair . . .
   I dreamed of the Holy City, well ordered and just.
   I dreamed of a garden of paradise,
     well-being all around and a good water supply.
   I dreamed of disarmament and forgiveness,
     and caring embrace for all those in need.
   I dreamed of a coming time when death is no more.

Last night as I lay sleeping . . .
   I had a nightmare of sins unforgiven.
   I had a nightmare of land mines still exploding
     and maimed children.
   I had a nightmare of the poor left unloved,
     of the homeless left unnoticed,
     of the dead left ungrieved.
   I had a nightmare of quarrels and rages
     and wars great and small.

When I awoke, I found you still to be God,
   presiding over the day and night
     with serene sovereignty,
   for dark and light are both alike to you.

At the break of day we submit to you
     our best dreams
     and our worst nightmares,
   asking that your healing mercy should override threats,
     that your goodness will make our
       nightmares less toxic
       and our dreams more real.

Thank you for visiting us with newness
       that overrides what is old and deathly among us.
Come among us this day; dream us toward
       health and peace,
we pray in the real name of Jesus
       who exposes our fantasies.

 

Walter Brueggemann, journeywithjesus.net October 31, 2021 

Half a Heritage

And then there’s Dad, sent off  
at twelve to boarding school  
where he learned the rudiments 
of Lutheran theology and how

to do his own laundry and how  
to smoke a pack a day, a thing  
so well learned that it became  
a 57 year old habit. Do the math

and you’ll know how short he  
lived, how long he blew smoke  
rings for me and my siblings  
as he wrote his sermons, graded

papers, sipped a martini, watched  
Gunsmoke and my brother’s baseball  
games and my mother as she lifted  
loaves from the oven, all with

the pleasure of a twelve-year-old,  
the devotion of a monk whose  
charge it is to focus on the cup,  
the host, open mouths all around.

 

Mary M. Brown, The Christian Century October 23, 2023

"To Be of Use"

 

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

 

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

 

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

 

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Margie Piercy, Circles on the Water (Alfred A. Knopf, 1973)

Mend

My Mama had the gift of hand sewing—one perfect stitch
after another perfect stitch, eyeballing the precise length 

of thread needed to repair what had ripped a gaping 
hole, unmaking the whole swath of cotton-polyester fabric

she draped across her delicate boney shoulders before 
a night out with my father—painting the town red 

she said of those early dates when he handed her his fat 
quarters hoping they would be enough to make something 

beautiful like the outfits she sewed: plaid culottes with matching 
vests, paisley dresses, fringed halters—she tells me this while 

I watch the needle bully a ruby rivulet from her thumb, sullying 
the myth of cotton without the blood, when she tries to mend 

my middle-school uniform skirt, a navy pleat I never noticed 
had been stretched into splitting—

 

L. Renee, poetrynw.org June 11, 2022

The Next Generation of Mourning

 

I have begun, like my mother before me,
to cross out names. She lived to read the obituaries
of all her friends. In my generation, the first girl
I ever kissed is dead, complications of pneumonia.

I saw the email on the way from something
important to something suddenly not, and felt
nothing, as if a high-powered bullet had passed
through me without hitting heart or head or bone.

Later: the ache as I remembered
when we were 16, in a state
of mutual crush, and rode to the lake—
that parent-approved, church-sponsored
alternative to a real beach trip,
and made out in the back seat of a red ’64
Chevy Impala with Ray driving and Mable
looking back now and then to wink and grin.

Soon the romance was over and we moved on,
but never forgot that date, and when
I saw her forty years later we still joked
and smiled about that ride and wondered
whatever happened to Ray and Mable.

 

Richard Allen Taylor, Armed and Luminous (Main Street Publishing Company, 2016)

Adage

 

When it’s late at night and branches
are banging against the windows,
you might think that love is just a matter

of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
into the fire of someone else,
but it’s a little more complicated than that.

It’s more like trading the two birds
who might be hiding in that bush
for the one you are not holding in your hand.

A wise man once said that love
was like forcing a horse to drink
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

Let us be clear about something.
Love is not as simple as getting up
on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.

No, it’s more like the way the pen
feels after it has defeated the sword.
It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

You look at me through the halo of the last candle
and tell me love is an ill wind
that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

but I am here to remind you,
as our shadows tremble on the walls,
that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

Billy Collins, Aimless Love (Random House, 2013)

Cathedrals

 We went out early

to water our tomato tree,

a ripening Park’s Whopper

potted beside the yellow onions.

 

From the stalk to the ledge

there was something

birthed overnight:

all air shine,

fine-threaded and intricate

it stretched,

holding court

with drops of dew,

gleaming in the light.

 

Oh! I gasped,

as I marveled

at the spider’s web.

How she must have

toiled in the dead

of night to produce

this holy silk:

so delicate, too,

and yet so indestructible.

Those tiny spires

and vaulted ceilings

patterned with her chisel,

all held tight at the center

and spun out hexagonal.

 

At once, I was gazing

at the Gothic turrets

of Notre Dame

before the fires

marred her.

At once, the flowers

in the foreground

became the spider’s

stained-glass windows,

and I felt the urge to kneel

and kiss the ground

in prayer.

 

And I heard:

Who needs the trappings

of four walls

or to travel to the city,

when everywhere

in nature

there are cathedrals?

 

Kimberly Phinney, radixmagazine.com April 12, 2023

At the Children's Violin Concert

          Firmly bowed
strands of horse hair
          tightened or
gathered up by
          a small hand to play
          a piece by J. S. Bach
who drank 36 cups of coffee every day.

I like him because he was
inspired by his belief in God
& he played an organ in a church
in Leipzig & he walked on
cobblestone streets to his home
every evening where he fathered
many children & wrote music
for his wife to clean house by.
He worked hard all his life
& when he died, he left us
all the little notes he made
for himself while he was alone.

Susan Cataldo, Drenched: Selected Poems of Susan Cataldo (Telephone Books, 2003)

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firecracker perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindedness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

Billy Collins

What the Janitor Heard in the Elevator

The woman in gold bracelets tells her friend:
I had to fire another one.
Can you believe it?
She broke the vase
Jack gave me for Christmas.
It was one of those,
you know? That worked
with everything. All my colors.
I asked him if he’d mind
if I bought one again just like it.
It was the only one that just always worked.

Her friend says:
Find another one that speaks English.
That’s a plus.

The woman in gold agrees
that is a plus.

 

Barbara Kingsolver, beeprint.wordpress.com January 11, 2010 

A Woman Is Not a Potted Plant

A woman is not a potted plant
her roots bound 
to the confines 
of her house

a woman is not
a potted plant
her leaves trimmed
to the contours 
of her sex

a woman is not
a potted plant
her branches
espaliered
against the fences
of her race
her country
her mother
her man
her trained blossom
turning this way
and
that
to follow
the sun
of whoever feeds
and waters
her

a woman
is wilderness
unbounded
holding the future
between each breath
walking the earth
only because
she is free
and not creeper vine
or tree

Nor even honeysuckle
or bee.

 

Alice Walker, anythingurban.typepad.com

We're All in the Telephone Book

We’re all in the telephone book,

Folks from everywhere on earth–

Anderson to Zabowski,

It’s a record of America’s worth.

We’re all in the telephone book,

There’s no priority–

A millionaire like Rockefeller

Is likely to be behind me.

For generations men have dreamed

Of nations united as one.

Just look in your telephone book

To see where that dream’s begun.

When Washington crossed the Delaware

And the pillars of tyranny shook,

He started the list of democracy

That’s America’s telephone book.

Langston Hughes, Poems for America: 125 Poems that Celebrate the American Experience Carmela Ciuraru, ed. (Scribner Poetry, 2000) 

Safety Net

This morning I woke
thinking of all the people I love
and all the people they love
and how big the net
of lovers. It felt so clear,
all those invisible ties
interwoven like silken threads
strong enough to make a mesh
that for thousands of years
has been woven and rewoven
to catch us all.
Sometimes we go on
as if we forget
about it. Believing only
in the fall. But the net
is just as real. Every day,
with every small kindness,
with every generous act,
we strengthen it. Notice,
even now, how
as the whole world
seems to be falling, it
is there for us as we
walk the day’s tightrope,
how every tie matters.

 

Wahtola Trommer, janicefalls.wordpress.com, August 4, 2021

Alzheimer's

Chairs move by themselves, and books.
Grandchildren visit, stand
new and nameless, their faces' puzzles
missing pieces. She's like a fish

 

in deep ocean, its body made of light.
She floats through rooms, through
my eyes, an old woman bereft
of chronicle, the parable of her life.

And though she's almost a child
there's still blood between us:
I passed through her to arrive.
So I protect her from knives,

 

stairs, from the street that calls
as rivers do, a summons to walk away,
to follow. And dress her,
demonstrate how buttons work,

 

when she sometimes looks up
and says my name, the sound arriving
like the trill of a bird so rare
it's rumored no longer to exist.

 

Bob Hicok, The Southern Review Vol, Iss 2 (April 1, 1995) 

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not die in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Dawna Merkova, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Passion and Purpose (Conari Press. 2000)  

You Are a Family

Your children have many moods. Let them.
Let the playful one play with abandon.
Let the earnest one read the book.
Let the weeping one cry freely.
Hold the frightened one in your lap.
Give space for the one who is flying or dancing
or battling dragons or maybe just moving
to move without getting hurt.
They all belong. They are all beautiful.
Gather them to the table and eat together.
Bless them all. They all enrich your wisdom.
Do not forget or abandon any of them.
When you go out into the world
be sure to have listened to them all.
It is to such as these that the Realm of God belongs.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net October 7, 2023

To Be Ready See

Last night a lunar eclipse

reddened, deepened,

said its prayers above our heads,

shared its vision of darkness

and light, movement and embrace,

of roundness, withdrawal and return,

the grace of shadowed loveliness,

a hymn of mystery chanted soft.

We stood in awe on our porch,

necks craned, while I'm sure many

slept or partied or did dishes

or stared at TVs, unaware.

If only someone had told them,

some TV host, “Go outside,”

some crazy neighbor,

“You're missing beauty.”

But no one told them.

They snacked, or tinkered.

They went to bed believing

in a world without such marvels.

Grace moves in shadows,

and wonders are given

that we would see

if only we knew to look.

This is why we study and pray:

to know of the work of God,

unseen. To know to look.

To be ready to see.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net,  accessed on September 28,2023

Red Stilts

Seventy years ago I made a pair of stilts
from six-foot two-by-twos, with blocks
to stand on nailed a foot from the bottom.

If I was to learn to walk on stilts I wanted
them red and I had to wait almost forever
for the paint to dry, laid over the arms

of a saggy, ancient Adirondack chair
no longer good for much but holding hoes
and rakes and stakes rolled up in twine,

and at last I couldn’t wait a minute longer
and took the stilts into my hands and stepped
between them, stepped up and stepped out,

tilted far forward, clopping fast and away
down the walk, a foot above my neighborhood,
the summer in my hair, my new red stilts

stuck to my fingers, not knowing how far
I’d be able to get, and now, in what seems
just a few yards down the block, I’m there.

 

Ted Kooser, poetryonthecharles.net August 24, 2020

Losing Steps

1

It’s probably a Sunday morning
in a pickup game, and it’s clear
you’ve begun to leave
fewer people behind.

Your fakes are as good as ever,
but when you move
you’re like the Southern Pacific
the first time a car kept up with it,

your opponent at your hip,
with you all the way
to the rim. Five years earlier
he’d have been part of the air

that stayed behind you
in your ascendance.
On the sidelines they’re saying,
He’s lost a step.

2

In a few more years
it’s adult night in a gymnasium
streaked with the abrupt scuff marks
of high schoolers, and another step

leaves you like a wire
burned out in a radio.
You’re playing defense,
someone jukes right, goes left,

and you’re not fooled
but he’s past you anyway,
dust in your eyes,
a few more points against you.

3

Suddenly you’re fifty;
if you know anything about steps
you’re playing chess
with an old, complicated friend.

But you’re walking to a schoolyard
where kids are playing full-court,
telling yourself
the value of experience, a worn down

basketball under your arm,
your legs hanging from your waist
like misplaced sloths in a county
known for its cheetahs and its sunsets.

 

Stephen Dunn, poetrytreeonthecharles.net June 28, 2023

What the Doctor Said

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

Raymond Carver, All of Us: Collected Poems (Harvill Press, 1996)

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

 

St. Francis of Assisi 

Last Night I Was A Child Again in Raleigh

Last night I was a child again
in Raleigh. And the
Dorich boys were on the roof
and my sister was
waiting behind the Monopoly
board and it was summer
and the heat was like
a separate personality and
dogs wandered here and
there unhindered by fences or
leashes and I could see
how my future spread out be-
fore me like a relief map
without relief and I only wanted
to fit in again, to find
my family intact, Scamp still
alive and my father,
regal in his recliner, an
ashtray full of cigarettes
near him and I wanted to say,
Father, stop now, stop please,
let this not be dream. Let it
be true that I am a child again
in Raleigh, under the
finest sun anyone had ever seen,
never to be seen again.

 

Corey Mesler, Among the Mensans (Iris Press, 2017)

To A Friend Who Does Not Believe in God

Neither do I, but yesterday, in the hospital,

for two hours, I held the hand of a dying woman—

my friend’s grandmother, 94, barely intelligible,

and in unrelenting pain. Every few seconds,

she slurred what could only be, Help me.

Help me. Help me. Over and over. Nothing

we did worked: not water, not raising or lowering

the bed, not massage, nothing but canned pineapple,

the little piece we would place in her mouth,

the chewing, something she could do; the juice,

a blessing on her dry tongue. But all too soon

the pain bit back down—the moaning, the grimace,

the Help me. The human remembering the animal.

Suffering and more suffering. Until my friend

placed her phone next to her grandmother’s ear

and played Alan Jackson singing “What a Friend

We Have in Jesus,” when, from the first chord

on the guitar, her body stilled, her face went slack.

For two minutes, she went somewhere else,

somewhere quiet, beautiful, free of pain.

We played it again. And again. And when

she fell asleep, when her breathing deepened,

her mouth and eyes still open; when the Furies

stopped their gorging, we were so grateful,

not to God, but to her faith, to her belief in something

better, something kinder, and with fewer teeth.

 

Jose Alcantara, Rattle #81 Fall 2023 

The "B" List

Boy, I could

Be in trouble.

Before I left

By myself to go grocery shopping, we

Built a list of what we need

But on the way to

Buy it all I

Blundered, lost the list, don’t want to go

Back, admit my error

Besides it would

Be a waste of time.

 

Believe it or not, I remember everything, not a

Billion items and all

Began with a

“B”. First up 

Back—

Bacon enough for four sandwiches. You won’t have more than that, too fat.

Bananas and

Bagels for

Breakfast

Brussel sprouts

Because we 

Both love your special recipe.

Boil them a

Bit. Add chili peppers, soy sauce.

Butters—three

Both almond and dairy, salted and not. Hot

Barbequed chicken

Blue cheese cuz it pleases you

Black Diamond slices for me

Brie for

Both of us. A

Brick of ice cream

Blueberry pie, not sugar or pecan

Because all the sugar reminds me

Brown sugar, and 

Brown eggs from happy chickens

Barn-raised maybe

But also free to range

But

But

But, am I forgetting something. Ah! A

Broom. Not 

Big, small, more a whisk with matching

Black dustpan to sweep up

Bread crumbs and sesame

Bagel seeds from the floor. What’s more

Bags for the vacuum cleaner

But, finally, not on the list

Beautiful cut flowers, something we’ve missed. 

 

Frank Beltrone, rattle.com September 22, 2023

Bathing the New Born

I love with an almost fearful love

to remember the first baths I gave him -

our second child, our first son -

I laid the little torso along

my left forearm, nape of the neck

in the crook of my elbow, hips nearly as

small as a least tern's hips

against my wrist, thigh held loosely

in the loop of thumb and forefinger,

the sign that means exactly right. I'd soap him,

the long, violet, cold feet,

the scrotum wrinkled as a waved whelk shell

so new it was flexible yet, the chest,

the hands, the clavicles, the throat, the gummy

furze of the scalp. When I got him too soapy he'd

slide in my grip like an armful of buttered

noodles, but I'd hold him not too tight,

I felt that I was good for him,

I'd tell him about his wonderful body

and the wonderful soap, and he'd look up at me,

one week old, his eyes still wide

and apprehensive. I love that time

when you croon and croon to them, you can see

the calm slowly entering them, you can

sense it in your clasping hand,

the little spine relaxing against

the muscle of your forearm, you feel the fear

leaving their bodies, he lay in the blue

oval plastic baby tub and

looked at me in wonder and began to

move his silky limbs at will in the water.

 

Sharon Olds, The New Yorker October 15, 1984