Passengers

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) 

In the Distant Past

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)

Pray for the Bad Guys

             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

After Reading Peterson's Guide

 

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

The Husband

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

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

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