Alone

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Maya Angelou, Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (Random House, Inc., 1975)

The Lilies

When I learned I might have cancer,

I bought fifteen white lilies. Easter was gone:

the trumpets were wilted, plants crooked with roots

bound in pots. I dug them into the garden,

knowing they would not bloom for another year.

All summer, the stalks stood like ramshackle posts

while I waited for results. By autumn, the stalks

had flopped down. More biopsies, laser incisions,

the cancer in my tongue a sprawling mass. Outside,

the earth remained bare, the rhizomes shrunkened

below the frost line. Spring shoots appeared

in bright green skins, and lilies bloomed

in July, their waxed trumpets pure white,

dusting gold pollen to the ground.

                                                                   This year,

tripled in number, they are popping up again. I wait,

a ceremony, for the lilies to open, for the serpentine length

of the garden to bloom in the shape of my tongue's scar,

a white path with one end leading into brilliant air,

the other down the throat's canyon, black

and unforgiving. I try to imagine

what could grow in such darkness. I am waiting

for the lilies to open. 

Karenne Wood, Markings on Earth (University of Arizona Press, 2001)

A Sonnet for Holy Thursday

Here is the source of every sacrament,
The all-transforming presence of the Lord,
Replenishing our every element,
Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives us bread and wine,
The air delights to bear his Spirit's speech,
The fire dances where the candles shine,
The waters cleanse us with his gentle touch.
And here he shows the full extent of love
To us whose love is always incomplete.
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray him, though it is the night,
He meets us here and loves us into light.

Malcolm Guite

Viola Tricolor

Into the shade by the porch
bloomed the first wild pansy,
its small yellow face sunny
and eager and open.

The Athenians used to make
the tiny flowers into syrup
to moderate anger and
to comfort and strengthen the heart.

And here it is today,
small volunteer beauty,
growing in this patch of dirt
where nothing else wants to grow.

This tiny garden is but one of many
concurrent realities -- others involve
hospitals short of beds, loved ones
gone, doctors scared to go home.

Our hearts need strengthening.
Little violet, we're learning, too,
how to be surrounded by death
and still rise up, bringing beauty.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,  wordwoman.com, April 1, 2020

For the Hurting

God, I confess how much of my faith is for me alone,
and does not care for the poor and the lonely.

Burn a place in my heart for the hurting.
Take my prayer and give it to them.

Divide my faith between me and those who doubt.
Split my assurance with those who despair.

Share my joy with the oppressed,
and my hope with the abused.

May all I believe, all I do, all I pray
be for the sake of your beloved who hurt the most.

May my prayer disturb me until it leads to action,
to work and witness for justice, to change the world.

God of love and justice, give me courage rather than peace,
compassion rather than comfort, earth rather than heaven.

With Christ, I ask you, God:
save me last.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, accessed on March, 27, 2020

Beckoning Benches

Coronavirus or not

I still enjoy
the daily circuit
of the sun
the gradual changes
the way the seasons run --

the way light
filters through maple leaves --
the art that God arranges
the arms of she
who welcomes me . . .

I sit among all of these
and whisper a prayer of thanks
that there remain
so many things
no plague can take away

Michael Escoubas, yourdailypoem.com, March 30, 2020

The Courtesy of the Blind

The poet reads his lines to the blind.
He hadn't guessed that it would be so hard.
His voice trembles.
His hands shake.

He senses that every sentence
is put to the test of darkness.
He must muddle through alone,
without colors or light.

A treacherous endeavor
for his poems' stars,
dawns, rainbows, clouds, their neon lights, their moon,
for the fish so silvery thus far beneath the water
and the hawk so high and quiet in the sky.

He reads -- since its too late to stop now --
about the boy in a yellow jacket on a green field,
red roofs that can be counted in the valley,
the restless numbers on soccer players' shirts,
and the naked stranger standing in a half-shut door.

He'd like to skip -- though it can't be done --
all the saints on that cathedral ceiling,
the parting wave from a train,
the microscope lens, the ring casting a glow,
the movie screens, the mirrors, the photo albums.

But great is the courtesy of the blind,
great is their forbearance, their largesse.
They listen, smile, and applaud.

One of them even comes up
with a book turned wrongside out
asking for an unseen autograph.

Wislawa Szymborska, Monologue of a Dog: New Poems (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company, 2006)