The Colors of Communion
I am singing/of the wonder of how roots/so love the buds they bid them grow...
Monet Refuses the Operation
Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to...
Winter Meditation
Something has changed in me this winter. In the past I’ve focused on how long winter is, How miserable I find it, and how it seems so interminable. This winter, I find myself thinking instead That every day, every hour, every minute Brings us just that much closer to spring. We all experience...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The Wanderer
A cold grey sky, a cold grey sea And a cold grey mist that is chilling me; A light that burns on the harbor bar With the dull dim glow of a distant star....
To Outgrow the Past
To outgrow the past but not extinguish it; To be progressive but not raw, Free but not mad, critical but not sterile, expectant but not deluded; To be scientific but not to live on formulas that cut us off from life; To hear amidst clamor the pure, deep tones of the spirit; To seek the wisdom tha...
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....
Beyond Borders
Go forth Because we are always going forth from somewhere Going from our homes, our childhoods Going from our cities and countries Going from innocence to experience to enlightenment Going into mystery and questions Going into the desert Getting to the other side....
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.
Communion Circle
The earth. One planet. Round, global, so that when you trace its shape with your finger, you end up where you started. It's one. It's whole. All the dotted lines we draw on our maps of this globe are just that, dotted lines. They smear easily. Oceans can be crossed. Even the desert can be crossed.
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...
Suppose
Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? —Kabir Suppose you cried a thousand years for a child who died when she drank bad water. Suppose you organized a great movement to clean the water. Suppose you carried the first filled glass to the...
Vanishing Song Birds
I understand history as possibility...that could also stop being a possibility. —Paulo Freire The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the rustling grass, where the bobwhite drums and the meadowlark's melody is vanishing. The winds of extinction sing a mournful song in the dark forest...
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....
Distant Return
Here, I will be discovered and lost: Here, I will, perhaps, be stone and silence. —Pablo Neruda Someday, out there, on a day like this in a place I will never see, where the clearing winds always come after the storm, I will arrive nameless on a distant memory carrying with me all the best I gave...
Labyrinth
Walk the maze within your heart: guide your steps into its questioning curves. This labyrinth is a puzzle leading you deeper into your own truths. Listen in the twists and turns. Listen in the openness within all searching. Listen: a wisdom within you calls to a wisdom beyond you and in that...
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...
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,...
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...
Joy
I have been wondering what the morning glories know. Is it envy that compels these vines to strangle other flowers arising in their path? Or perhaps self-preservation, to climb these walls, forsaking humbler beings, winding greedy stems around the trellis in their hungry pursuit of light. Still,...
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...
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....
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...
Let Me Die Laughing
We are all dying, our lives always moving toward completion. We need to learn to live with death, and to understand that death is not the worst of all events. We need to fear not death, but life— empty lives, loveless lives, lives that do not build upon the gifts that each of us has been given,...
In Gatherings
In gatherings we are stirred like the leaves of the fall season rustling around sacred trees, tossed hither and yon until we come to rest together, quietly, softly . . . We come to gather strength from each other. We come to give strength to each other....
Order
Breakfast on kosher macaroons and Diet Pepsi in the car on the way to Price Chopper for lamb. Peel five pounds of onions and let the Cuisinart shred them while you push them down and weep....
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...
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....
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...
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...
Meditation on Opposites
Spirit of the universe, Life force that flows through all beings, Power beyond our knowing, We ask you to help us see beyond our dependence on opposites— To transcend our desire to know who is like us, and who is not. Open us to the knowledge that in this room there are complexities and...
Part as Parcel
I am part of you, O Truth Unfolding. I am part of you. I am part of a cosmos. I cannot see either its edge or its end. How amazing! I am part of a galaxy of a million, billion stars. They say it’s a pinwheel. How wonderful! I am part of a system of planets that swing around a small parent star.
We never know who we are
We never know who we are (this is strange, isn’t it?) or what vows we made or who we knew or what we hoped for or where we were when the world’s dreams were seeded. Until the day just one of us sighs a gentle longing and we all feel the change one of us calls a name and we all know to be there...
The Web of Life
There is a living web that runs through us To all the universe Linking us each with each and through all life On to the distant stars. Each knows a little corner of the world, and lives As if this were his all. We no more see the farther reaches of the threads Than we see of the future, yet...
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...
It Is That Time and That Place
Now is the time to call on the memories of the ancestors who thought they could not walk another step toward freedom—and yet they did. It is that time and place to call on the memories of the ancestors who, when the darkness of their lives threatened to take away the hope and light, reached a...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Grounded
It hurts to let go of intensity that zapped like electricity yesterday. It hurts to disconnect arcing power, watch it ground and vanish. What was it that surged through us to lighten gray, indifferent skies? What was it that connected our hearts to hope?...
The Way
I must live my own way, Refusing all that binds. I must know my own mind Among all other minds. I must do my own deeds, And in whatever lands. I will know my own hands Among all other hands. I must forsake the crowds, And walk with lonely fools, To seek for my own face In bleak, deserted pools. I...
The Way Out
In order to get out I must go through. There is no other way. No other way? But there must be another way, an easier path, a well-lit road. I cast about, scan the horizon— No other way. The way out is the way through. The way through is the way hard....
Contact
I stretch forth my hand Knowing not what I shall touch... A tender spot, An open wound, Warmth, Pulsing life, Fragile blossoms, A rock, Ice. I am tentative, trembling... Wishing to avoid hurt, Wanting to link my life with Life. Lonely, I desire companions Naked, I long for defenders....
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...