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)