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...
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...
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....
Redwing Blackbird
I look up and experience her music as a Beatitude of Peace, a feathery sonnet that rings of grace and hope...
Beneath the Slow Stars — Approaching Solstice
There in the deep sack of night, a tiny Hope was born.
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...
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 Colors of Communion
I am singing/of the wonder of how roots/so love the buds they bid them grow...
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....
A Prayer among Friends
Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another, we live here in the light of this unlikely world that isn’t ours for long. May we spend generously the time we are given. May we enact our responsibilities as thoroughly as we enjoy our pleasures....
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...
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...
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....
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...
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....
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...
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....
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,...
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....
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....
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.