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...
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...
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.
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....
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....
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...
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...
Deal with God
Sometimes I offer to make a deal with God. “I’ll tell you about my resistance to prayer,” I say, “If you’ll explain the Holocaust.” God declines to comment, and the lawyers make their prepared statements on his behalf. I kind of hate when he does that. I love God best, I confess, when I...
Sabr wa Iman (Patience and Faith)
We need resilience, perseverance, and persistence.
Redwing Blackbird
I look up and experience her music as a Beatitude of Peace, a feathery sonnet that rings of grace and hope...
Revolutionary Love
Together we create a love energy more powerful than any force of oppression…
Perfect, Love
Later, poets would tell of stars, shepherds, and seers, songs of angels…
Hug the Prayer
Hug the prayer before it leaves your body. Float it along like murmuring leaves.…
Transformations
…it is enough to release the piercing frigidity, the brittle rigidity of ice— and embrace the versatile, vital, blessing, bathing, embodiment of water.
When I Feel Helpless
If I can do nothing more, I go out the back door and sit on the steps where the tuxedo cat rubs my leg and I look for the holy.…
Hope, Nearly Not There
There’s no package called hope. Nothing at a shop to look for. Hope won’t store like hay in a barn. It is a last leaf on a branch in deep winter. It is a singular thing, firm when it’s found—a hand reached out. A word to the marrow. Hope is fine-grained, like lavender gone to seed. Gossamer,...
When Your Best Friend Has Four or So Legs
What it means to have a pet is to love someone who speaks a language you do not. A dog will bow and prance, a cat will purr and blink. A guinea pig will giggle and squeak. A long time ago a friend of mine had a dog with soft ears, and considered herself the pup’s guardian....
A Blessing for the Front Lines
Oh you You rebel You queer and wayward child You abandoned and listless You angry and forgotten You brown and black and indigenous You homeless and impoverished You dreamer You warrior You are not alone here You have never been alone Not in this place, not in this time Not in the whole of history...
A Prayer for Salvation
Here I am, God, here I am. Here I am with the dishes in the sink, the dust on the shelves, the skin on my hands which is drying out and starting to crack. My appetite has gone, without any other bodies to remind my body of itself. I can pray for salvation but my bones know this is all there is....
Winter Solstice
Perhaps for a moment the typewriters will stop clicking, the wheels stop rolling the computers desist from computing, and a hush will fall over the city....
Pandemic
What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down. And when your...
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...
Sleep Will Come Upon Our Eyelids
Sleep will come upon our eyelids and they will not ever be lifted again.
Miriam's Daughter
We must be willing and prepared to dance with joy when liberation arrives.
Let Us Give Thanks for the Whistleblowers
Let us grieve for our own pain, as oppressions / come between us, as sharp / as broken glass.
Holy Discomfort and Holy Disruption
Discomfort /in the name of holy wholeness / Bring all of ourselves / in the name of holy, of wholeness
Assume Goodwill
I cannot assume anything when you welcome me into your spaces with suspicion and fear.
Ramadan Home
Ramadan, never forgotten, entices me back to Love, and I am home once again
The Colors of Communion
I am singing/of the wonder of how roots/so love the buds they bid them grow...
Beneath the Slow Stars — Approaching Solstice
There in the deep sack of night, a tiny Hope was born.
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?...
Release
I wish I were like the trees, Who let their leaves go gracefully, without regret. Or the tumbling stream that flushes silt to sea, Exchanging murkiness for blessed clarity. Or the dandelion, who bows its head to the subtle breeze, Unleashing its future without fear or loss. Instead, I drive...
In the Ruins
A man sits on the rubble— not just in the rubble, but on the pile of what remains. No people in the bombed-out houses. No dogs. No birds. Just ragged hunks of concrete and loss. And on his perch he is playing an instrument constructed of what is left—an olive oil can, a broom handle, a bowed...
Let the Artists Win
I vote we let the artists win the ones covered in paint from their last attempt to smuggle across the beauty of a bowl of fruit the 14-year-old rapper learning to spit throwing life's chaos on the rhythm wheel uncovering the shapes that live on after the next break I say we let the food bank...
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?...
Desire
I want not dainty bone china-cupped, oh-so-polite, pinky-extended sips, but guzzle-by-the-gallon, drink-from-the-fire-hose- two-hundred-eighty-psi- Niagara-Falls volumes, and inch-thick slices of hearty multi-grain-hard-crusted- with-stick-in-your-teeth-seeds-bread (none of that bland supermarket...
I have always hated to wait for things
Through the windy night something is coming up the path towards the house. I have always hated to wait for things. I think I will go to meet whatever it is.
The First Pair of Underpants
I wonder Did God’s heart (I mean the love-mushy, endearing part of God) That part The heart that I don’t really believe in as a thing, With pulses... ANYWAY Did that heart Did it Break just a little; When God realized "Oh no— They have made leaves into underpants!" If God says things like...
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....
It Is Not Always Easy to Find Love at the Center
We gather in covenant to celebrate the reality that love is at the core of our beings and that love will guide us if we open ourselves to the challenges which love requires of us.
Agenda
The agenda looks long. When will I get home? What surprises and big decisions await us?
Gift from the Geese
High up, the wild geese have pulled the rusty doorway of Autumn closed behind them, their sharp music a choir of deep acoustic truth.