Category: poetry as prayer

Friday’s Poem: The Rain and Home

The rain. Blurry cloud-springs of it.

The symphony of it repeated from sky

to ear pressed against the screen.

A permeable canopy covering hillocks of earth

as our slight human lives bulk up

for coming winter. Water so holy in scorched land.

Downpours reflect and shadow the pallid light

as our nests are resettled with comforts,

a ritual of expectancy.

This season is a promise and a kind of partition

before rain sharpens into sleet–

we labor, hunker down, forecast.

I try to separate possible fates of the world from home.

As if they can be so different. Sometimes, still.

Nature weighs in, from all perspectives:

splash drench stir cool carry away trash

***

Yesterday as I opened blinds to let in

a sunnier moment you stated an intention

to fly out to see our parents but

noted a problem: where did they reside now?

I pressed my lips together. Address: cemetery.

Said gentler words as I have before, matter-of-fact.

Your lips form Oh and that brings Mom and Dad

here and now, to your deep heart and mine.

When you ask after the others, I must count

the dead as I’ve done dozens of times

until you know it’s truly so, til next time you forget.

It may be in the next moment.

I swallow, pet your good dog.

I am getting better with this roll call.

Your memories are stolen out from under you

in plain sight. I recall lovely times so

you can borrow mine. I know they won’t keep.

I want to cry out,

take them all so you can return to me, sister.

But you are sitting beside me, yourself.

We color pictures in brilliant palettes,

flashy mandalas of joy.

And sing “Stairway to the Stars”, one verse

that we half-create. As we talk, you

stare at a photo of my twin granchildren

in strange, gorgeous homemade masks,

and this triggers balloons of your laughter.

It obliterates every

single

point of pain.

It is how we do this.

It’s raining again, I say, pleased with it, with us.

Oh, is it? you answer with a dreamy gaze.

***

Meanwhile much later in the dark

the rain pummels and drips.

When I can’t sleep and there is a lull in showers,

I turn on a soundtrack of murmuring Northwest rainforest.

Like outside my windows, it whispers Home.

The banket and quilt are re-shaped, made welcoming.

Into my dreams arrive those who are gone,

then the living burst in and it’s a mad gathering;

we go exquisite places, do impossible things

and make a simple stone house out of ruins.

The rain pulses against shingles, softens thoughts;

it swathes sorrow, reveals wisps of light.

Nature cannot know how much I need this

(or can it?) after a firestormed summer.

Celebration rains are for other creatures,

cracked piney dirt, all that has struggled to live.

But, too, for this woman who in the morning

stands in slow drizzle, hands and face turned up

to sky’s sweet baptismal power.

Twisting leaves in bronze and cinnamon

amaze as they drift and skip to earth,

slick and shining as they pass.

Friday’s Poem: Instuctions on Life Saving

In the interest of retrieving lives, obscure or otherwise,
a refresher on the following procedures:

we will row the boats down a rough river
hitch up our pants and hike high ridges
climb ancient oaks to puzzle out plans
gather fruits and celebrate succulence
crouch in wild grasses, praise redwinged blackbirds
hunt for stones and lost beads for our adornment
lug water to forgotten snap peas and tiger lilies
place a child’s palm in ours with kisses on cheeks
conjur equations that design new music
hang out in coffee shops and close our eyes
sink bare toes into sea-carved sand
note all tears slipping from heart to eyes
whisper in ears one mantra or nonsense
welcome midnight and the owl’s shadow flight
hang onto each other and lean back in a circle
shout praise and pleas to unperturbed mountains
find more endings that give birth to beginnings
pick random shards to make a thousand bowls
to swamp with life-light, then pour into the dark

and may our blood run salt-sweet-steady,
and minds crackle with the power of discovery
and souls be seeded with courage and patience

to salvage crushing times and deep, daring tales we inhabit
and even one who wanders misunderstood or failing just below an
exquisite horizon where nobody thought to look:
Call out.
Listen.
Answer.
Go forth.

Friday’s Poem: For the Living and Dead

(Photos by this writer. Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, B.C.)

For the living there are offerings of flowers rising,

embroidered throughout valleys and mountains,

and green things that shimmy in rainfall and wind

and zigzag calls of feathered, furred,

the sleek and shelled creatures as if

nothing was awry, and the earth is at peace.

For the dead, perhaps silence, and sudden dreams of beauty

that cover the past, rescue the present or design a future

we know nothing about; their gardens beckon in ways

only mystics can conjur when everything is torn inside out.

The living, the dead; what truth can be said of them?

What falsehood separates them and us?

My heart speaks to those here; eyes weep for those gone.

And the blood of earth recapitulates with clusters of

snowdrops, marsh marigolds, wild roses, tiger lilies.

Wars indict humans by the roots of resolute trees.

Thousands of years we have mastered, failed, fallen.

Bitter seeds attempt to take hold

but cannot flourish forever nor

invade realms of Power beyond our ken.

There is wisdom we do not seek enough,

nor decipher well when we most need it.

And yet bees still labor happily;

redwing blackbirds trill their stories;

foxes hide and seek, nurture new life in the den.

I cover my head. I toil in time until unable.

I await an invitation to paradise as I tire.

But today, prayers for sweetness

and mercy for the living;

For the dying and dead,

a crying out,

a plea for safe passage,

a benediction uttered into deepest night

into deepest everything

Friday’s Poem: Reach and Grab

Reach, reach and grab, I am beseeched,

threading through splotches of green, spangles of gold,

river wind riffling through hair.

The command speaks to the wintered wait for

elixer of light and spell of flowers,

the proud trees a sprawl of architecture,

each call of a bird definitive, its brilliance

an arc that can overtake my mind.

But other powers capture the world,

and sow misery with seeds so harsh and bitter

they flame in the hand, the throat, the soul:

the dangerous grab reaches this ritual of spring.

Now between steps are prayers frail with words,

tiny balloons that rise, vanish.

In noon heat amid a cooperative of bees

comes this swell of grief.

What safety is a cloak of beauty?

How do I love the world and despise it?

How to open arms to watercolor sky as

storms crouch at the horizon?

Reach, grab life:

may a few burdens settle. I look outward.

An eagle couple observes from a high perch;

fisherman and child cast their lines once more;

a long boat is rowed by eight in deep rhythm;

a melody that arrived at dawn finds my lips,

escapes into bouquet of air, a shining thing.

Treetops wave as I pass.

The yellow of sun offers a mercy.

Reach. Hold on.

Friday’s Poem: A Small Map to a New Year

Let it begin, the invisible slide into another year,

feet and minds discerning the way from now to another now.

We have the moment, this one captivating us once more

as it enters full consciousness with sluggish drift, a fizzing spark,

a lone howl arising with chorusers lined up watching time.

The old wishing, an ardor for new and surprising, arises.

The new year’s smallness is made larger in expectancy,

though it will be more altered by random schemes.

Like the barn owl that I saw every walk: it disappeared.

Its feathers amid ferns make me weep. I thought it would stay

on and on, a sign of grace in the strife.

We cannot tell a story before it germinates,

is freely given or exchanged like a secret,

or peered at with a flurry of hearbeats: what will be made known?

And so another year’s unveiling is launched,

subdued, perhaps glittery.

Outside my back window, nothing startles me and yet

the old wide sky pinks up and oranges over,

then greys until, half blinded, I still lean

toward limbs of pines and shelter of mountains,

the horizon beyond current reach.

What is this time amid eternity’s strange magic?

Wind shivers my lashes as I step outside, but there

still remains a tick tick, tick tock: clock towers overseeing the night.

So then let it begin. We have done this before,

made time important as we still

opened arms and found them laden with sorrow,

the unweildy bulk of others’ wants and needs

but, too, astonishment and happiness,

love’s sudden salvation amid wars and storms.

Urgency can move us from victim to hero,

faces cleaned of bitter disbelief, transfigured by hope.

Oh, we are immense in our humaness.

We are brave and heartbroken,

scarred and beautiful beyond measure.

I am bowed down by miracles despite the malfeasance.

And the river knows what it knows as I move

through the days, walk, pray, am silent then sing.

In the center of forest, at water’s edge is renewal

but there is more ahead, women and men

and children rowing and trodding through the world.

Their breath as my breath, their fingers grasping my fingers.

We have learned how to walk on our knees all the way

from sunrise to dusk, and to carry or be carried,

have endured and languished in rock-hewn nights.

So we have lived these times, we have lived them in pieces

and in whole and those still here are living still.

Still.

Waiting for one moment to join

another, this age moving to that,

our scrap-stitched courage leading us

to the greater heart of humanity as we

cross bridges to lights in a beckoning distance.

I am crossing with you;

we will clear a path, devise our maps as we go.