Ramadan Home
Ramadan, never forgotten, entices me back to Love, and I am home once again
Supplication
I am so tired and weary, So tired of the endless fight, So weary of waiting the dawn And finding endless night. That I ask but rest and quiet— Rest for the days that are gone, And quiet for the little space That I must journey on.
These Days
I miss singing, the way we trusted/the air that moved between us. I miss/the casual assumption that everything/would be all right in the morning.
Church
My church is a ring of alders tilting toward a living pond, backed by the punctuation of tall firs fondling the morning breeze. In my chapel, redwing blackbird unravels her liquid song in the cattails. The thick mud smell is an incense, a beaver-felled tree is my pew. I toss my donation, red...
A Saving Faith
I had dreams about anywhere-else-but-here But our faith kept me close. I believed I had done something to deserve it. Our faith shouted, “No!” I tried to imagine it never happened But our faith reminded, “Yes, grief is real.” I thought I might die But our faith nurtured my life. I wondered...
Gratitude
Let’s start with the people we love and those who love us, thankful they are in our lives obliging us to open our hearts. Let open hearts embrace the Earth, the sea and soil and stars, blessed by bold beauty, the bounty of being. Then with hearts open to beauty let us embrace the arts and the...
The Solstice Teaches Us
The Solstices teach us that darkness comes, that darkness goes. The Solstices teach us that light comes, that light goes. The Solstices teach us, calmly, silently, to be calm, silent. Learning. The Solstices teach us as we circle the sun that everything flies....
Jesus at the Parade
Later there were mutterings at the bar, and throughout the law courts, that Jesus only showed at the gay pride parade to love the jewel, but not the quality, to love the potluck, but not the food, to love the vessel, but not the wine, to love the hot rod, but not the driver, to love the baby, but...
New People Came This Time
New People came this time, and we shared our stories, the familiar truths, about shock and healing and being glad that at last our children can say who they are, and we know them now, love them more. Funny stories and good news ripple around, and smiles about lesbigay ways, and jokes, against...
I Say It Touches Us
(adapted from the original) I say that it touches us that our blood is sea water and our tears are salt, that the seed of our bodies is scarcely different from the same cells in a seaweed, and that the stuff of our bones is like the coral. I say that the tide rolls in on us, whether we like it or...
Inexplicable
Inexplicable. How we rise each morning, instead of burying our heads under bedcovers, sewing them shut. Why we keep on welcoming babies with bone-deep joy to this sordid world. How we fill burlap sacks with grit and gratitude, our hands shredded as we drag one over the other....
Origins
What is the history of any thing? This apple, let's say, that my grandson just picked as he sits on my shoulders, feet dangling like parentheses around my heart?...
To My Haggadah
Over the years your staples have slipped and pages loosened. Here a faded purple crescent of ancient wine, there a smudge from bricks of date paste. But when you speak I swoon....
The Return of Earth/She
The Earth has returned. She is living, breathing, Realizing her breath was leaving. She was needing us to remember her worth, to recognize her worth all over again. We used to be her friends. We used to help her heal us. Help her, heal us. Help her heal us....
Hope
See how the winds have shaped her hands to hold hope? So tenuous, it trembles like a hummingbird’s heart. She gently carries hope to a nest in the midst of the maelstrom and tilts it into the bowl of tiny feathers and mosses. Hope is so hard to cup. She might need your help when it seeps through...
Love Abundant
I lift my eyes up to the hills from where will my help come? My help comes from Love abundant. my help comes from the hills my help—my help, it comes from ancient Mothers whose hearts beat in mine. It comes from the trees that sway and the breeze that sways them . . . my help comes from all that...
Earthquake
(Ahmedabad, India, 2001) Mother Earth is shouting but we do not hear. She is filled with anguish, for all we understand is death. And in her agony she suffers too over the fact that she must kill her own to get our attentionn...
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
“Hope” is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all— And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard— And sore must be the storm— That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm— I’ve heard it in the...
The Day After
The day after the seder, reality shoves back in like a football player with lowered shoulder. Dishes to wash: the browned kugel pan, chopping knives, the eggbeater that whipped the whites for Eppie’s matzah balls, the gravy boats that held haroset, the glass bowls encrusted with salt. All day...
Choices
Yesterday, there were fewer cars at the Arrivals dock at the Portland airport than there were dogs being walked on my block. Yesterday, a friend reported a clandestine meeting—a walk with her elderly mother—careful to keep a six-foot distance as they strolled together in the sunshine. Yesterday,...
Still Queer in America
we were erased and still we loved we were shamed and still we loved we were expelled and still we loved we were laughed at and still we loved we were hunted and still we loved we were sacrificed and still we loved we were marketed and still we loved we were legislated and still we loved we were...
The Virgin Monologue
“‘God did it’ isn’t an explanation,” said Joseph. He got no account for the baby’s chromosomes, No description of the mechanism that Transmuted the divine shadow into royal blood. “‘The devil made me do it’ would have sounded better to me,” said Joseph, Though it never did him...
Anxiety
Fill me with anxiety, O Life! Electrify me, make me nervous Beyond any staid concern For those things which challenge Placid, flaccid ways, anachronisms of being. Keep me tense, a-tiptoe, Blinking at the novel, Reaching out for those things Just beyond my fingertips; So that I may make patterns,...
Creating Fire
Is the fire going out? Not in your belly, for you are still alive, but in your soul, that place where dreams fuel commitment where longings shape action where meaning flames purpose where passion ignites and rekindles your life fire. If your soul smolders dream on till you flame like a chalice of...
Autumn Chant
Now the autumn shudders In the rose's root, Far and wide the ladders Lean among the fruit. Now the autumn clambers Up the trellised frame And the rose remembers The dust from which it came. Brighter than the blossom On the rose's bough Sits the wizened orange, Bitter berry now; Beauty never...
Forgive Me
Forgive me dear father For all the trouble I caused The missed curfews The missed classes Your unfulfilled dreams for me Forgive me dear father But your dreams are not my dreams Forgive me dear father And I will forgive you For missed moments That you sacrificed So that one day I could follow my...
Mathematics
There is no algebra for death. No life lost cancels out another. The idea that there is some other side to the equation is a lie perpetrated by centuries of war and revenge. There is no other side. You cannot subtract and equalize the equation. There is an addition of loss, grief upon grief upon...
Outside/Inside
Outside The flags fly Down the highway, hanging on to the back of large trucks or the chest of a man....
A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark
Go slow if you can. Slower. More slowly still. Friendly dark or fearsome, this is no place to break your neck by rushing, by running, by crashing into what you cannot see....
Lucky Streak
Who cast a spell over my world? Who opened the doors, stirred the crowd of possibilities, put gold dust in my dreams causing my life to turn? O Fate, O Love, O Spirit, O God: is it true that all good things must end? Or have you set me on a path of meaning Not luck Of clarity Not magic And this...
Give All to Love
Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good-fame, Plans, credit and the Muse,— Nothing refuse. ’T is a brave master; Let it have scope: Follow it utterly, Hope beyond hope. It was never for the mean; It requireth courage stout. Souls above doubt, Valor unbending, It...
Uncounted Psalm
Why did I listen to Your calling, O God? Why did I step out on faith, O Love? Why did I lift my feet, ignore my fear, and run toward the unknown? Now I am far from home. My heart aches for my familiar land, for people who greeted me with kisses. I can’t see the way back—it doesn’t exist. I...
Poem in a Time of Peril
Of course truth is hard. It is a rock. Yet I do not think it will fall upon me And crush me. I do not think they can hammer it to bits And stone me. Help me place the rock in the strong current Of these rushing waters. I must climb upon it. I must know how truth feels....
Some Day
Once upon a time I was Now I am Some day I will become Once there was And now there is Soon there will be And some day there surely shall be Once upon a time we were Now we are And some day (Hallelujah!) we shall surely become Amen Amen...
Spiritual History
Let my body remember. Let my hands and feet remember. Let my breath remember those who have come before me, those who have come before us. Didn’t Muhammad wait quietly in his cave? And didn’t Jesus sigh silently by the blue lake? And Guan Yin, didn’t she sit in silence thinking about what to...
Earth
This is our earth. It falls through heaven like a pearl in a glass of plum wine. There are no other earths that I know of. There are no other skies that we have mapped. This is our earth. The Oneness who gave birth to it remains nameless. There was no midwife then to bring us word of the birth-cry.
T’hillah
Barukh atah, Emeth! Blest are you, o Truth. Like the fabled Moses, I too can never claim to have seen you “face to face.” Too often, I’ve hung my own face on you and pretended that I know something I do not. Indeed, my most honest heart confesses that at most, I have only caught the briefest...
Letter from Our Better Angels
Dear One, We have received your letter and we hate to tell you— not hate so much, but are a bit afraid to say— we cannot grant your requests as stated, but can only remind you of familiar things: First, faith. Faith in yourself and trust in others. We know it can be terrifying to be vulnerable,...
Living Waters
We float on a sea hidden beneath dry surfaces covered by stones. Isn’t this why we drink and dive so deeply go down to the sea in ships risk drowning, again and again? Isn’t this why Moses parted the waters to begin his journey? Why Jesus crossed the waters to comfort and challenge us? We were...
Nourished
When I look up into the night sky, I am in awe of all that is. There in a far away galaxy A star has died, Yet it is still bright for my eyes to see. And make a wish upon When I walk in the ocean I feel the waves rush across my feet And I feel a certain peace with the world I peer out into the...
Ready
"So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders." —Exodus 12:34 You’ll need to travel light. Take what you can carry: a book, a poem, a battered tin cup, your child strapped to your chest, clutching your necklace in one...
From the Shore
shouting back to Stevie Smith who cried “I’m drowning! Not waving!” I ain’t waving babe, I’m drowning going down in a cold lonely sea I ain’t waving babe, I’m drowning so babe quit waving at me I ain’t waving babe, I’m crying I’m crying, oh why can’t you see? I ain’t fooling...
Tangled
Knit six purl six sets of two rows four rows six rows up to twelve, patterns, repeating, steady, soothingly same. This is not what life is like. Life is like picking up a tousled hunk of yarn pulled out of the basket by an impatient child looking for a string too many times. You find an end. You...
Useful Anger
A good anger swallowed clots the blood to slime —Marge Piercy But what is to be done with it, this anger that dare not be swallowed? Should it be diluted with denial, cooled with indifference? Should it be sweetened with good intentions, softened with lies? Should it be spewed out red hot over...
In Real Time
#BlackLivesMatter Let the only burning be the fire of commitment in our hearts, minds, hands, spirits in our community of faith. Live solidarity. Use your voice. Demand justice... better, live it into being. Cry out for others to join you. Name hate as hate—without shrinking back without...
This Body
This body is not what it was I got shin splints from running today Ten years ago all I’d get was smelly feet My back aches just from sitting these days In my youth, all my pain came from climbing trees This body is not what it was Not some alien thing thrust upon me So clumsy, always in the way I...
The Bath
This is what one hundred years look like: A rounded wrinkled back, sparkling wet and soapy above the shower bench, and my hand, having gently formed in your seventieth year, and emerged with lifelines bent toward blessing, scrubbing circles across your soft, white skin. I drag the cloth...
Dependence Day
It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag, a day of staying home instead of crowding away, a day we celebrate nothing gained in war but what we’re given — how the sun’s warmth is democratic, touching everyone, and the rain is democratic...
The Legacy of Caring
Despair is my private pain Born from what I have failed to say failed to do failed to overcome. Be still my inner self let me rise to you let me reach down into your pain and soothe you....
Each New Day
Why is this blank page staring back at me, mocking, like an affliction, and fraught with dread? How can it hold such sway, this simple emptiness? Might it instead be a gift left on my doorstep overnight, waiting to be broken open with the dawn?...