Sonnet 84

While one sere leaf, that parting Autumn yields, 
   Trembles upon the thin, and naked spray, 
   November, dragging on this sunless day, 
   Lours, cold and sullen, on the watery fields;
And Nature to the waste dominion yields, 
   Stripped her last robes, with gold and purple gay — 
   So droops my life, of your soft beams despoiled, 
   Youth, Health, and Hope, that long exulting smiled;
And the wild carols, and the bloomy hues 
   Of merry Spring-time, spruce on every plain 
   Her half-blown bushes, moist with sunny rain, 
   More pensive thoughts in my sunk heart infuse 
 Than Winter’s grey, and desolate domain
Faded like my lost Youth, that no bright Spring renews.

--Anna Seward (1742-1809), English poet and novelist 

Enemies

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.


--Wendell Berry (1934- ), American poet, writer, agrarian, from Entries: Poems, 1994.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:44, All Saints' Day, Year A

Female

It was the other way round:
God waved his slow wand
And the creature became a woman,
Imperceptively, retaining its body,
Nose, brow, lips, eyes,
And the face that was like a flower
On the neck’s stem. The man turned to her,
Crazy with the crushed smell
Of her hair; and her eyes warned him
To keep off. And she spoke to him with the voice
Of his own conscience, and rippled there
In the shade. So he put his hands
To his face, while her forked laughter
Played on him, and his leaves fell
Silently round him, and he hung there
On himself, waiting for the God to see.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000),  Anglican priest and Welsh poet, from Collected Poems, 1945-1990

Relevant scripture: Genesis 2:4b-24

Heed the Call

Essential in pandemics, the woods call—
Come to us, unmasked and alone.
You who are weary of breathing your own stale words,
Come into our silence that transforms gasps into spirit.

Come close and walk softly on our hallowed ground,
Rediscovering the holiness of dirt.
Walk where honeysuckle incense whispers joy
And choir birds sing to quiet your internal ranting.

Come dwell here when the congregations shutter,
And all the world shelters in but carries on.
Find your way beneath old legacy oaks
Telling their tales of offering refuge.

Come weep beneath the hickory leaves,
Shimmering in a canopy when troubles press in.
Their sunlit dance will lift your eyes to the heavens
Where dreams of sweeter times are born.

Come be disconnected among sassafras sprouts
And receive a reprieve from daily counts of disease.
Feel the paw paws dare you to utter words like
Optimistic and joy without feeling ridiculous.

Come lie beneath a tulip poplar mast,
With billowing flowered bells that carry daydreams.
Wander in the gift of whim and fantasy
That awakens the spirit of peace.

Come smell cedar’s aromatic memory
Filling you with delight beyond your intellect.
Sweet as ironweed dancing with walnut trees
Just because the wind blows.

Come fall on your knees when you cannot contain
The beauty of bluebells blooming near a spotted fawn,
And give thanks for the essential woods
That have healed us again.


-- The Rev. Becca Stevens, posted on Facebook Oct. 26, 2020

Bird (watching

Yesterday in the chill
I unspooled the hose, stiffening already,
Resisting like a toddler,
Knotted like a fist
Rather than stretching sinuously.

Filled all the birdbaths,
Tilting out the leaves
And the sludge that will send
Clouds of mosquitos no matter the season
If left unchecked.

Offered my gifts
Of seed, suet, and seed cake.
Threw away the latest and greatest
Feeder that claimed to be squirrel-proof,
Bent like a bow tie on a tipsy groom.
Useless, and
Missing the lid the thieves had unscrewed
And thrown down the hill
Into the neighbors’ yard
With a war cry of triumph

from blue-painted Picts

howling down upon hapless Saxons.

But now all was quiet.
As soon as I returned inside
The rejoicing would begin.
Felt the eyes of someone on me.
Turned and saw
A bird (watching me,
The bird-watcher).

This hawk, still,

paused in mid-motion,

as if scared it would startle me into flight.

Pretending to survey

the collection of mourning doves

offered up as in a grocery aisle

while his yellow-lamped eye

remained steadily on me.

--LKS

A Blessing

The world now is too dangerous
and too beautiful for anything but love.
May your eyes be so blessed you see God in everyone.
Your ears, so you hear the cry of the poor.
May your hands be so blessed
that everything you touch is a sacrament.
Your lips, so you speak nothing but the truth with love.
May your feet be so blessed you run
to those who need you.
And may your heart be so opened,
so set on fire, that your love,
your love, changes everything.

-- from A Black Rock Prayer Book, http://www.ees1862.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/A-Black-Rock-Prayer-Book-2019.pdf 

Sanctuary

Before the sun rose
Or an altar was hewn
Before the crocus bloomed
Or a winter passed

Before the birds sang
Or the seas parted
Before a word was spoken
Or an apple bitten

Before the wine was blessed
Or a cross lifted
Before the path was chosen
Or a prayer offered

There was sanctuary.


--The Rev. Becca Stevens

Old Prairie House Between Tulsa and Bartlesville on US 75

I

Back in time
car in yard
shutters at windows
paint on gray boards
old man, old woman
their children gone
then man and woman younger
with young children
west wing not yet built on house
one wagon, horse arrive
untended land
back too far
young man, woman with eyes
like bright baubles
holding space
one shutter closes on another.


II

Grizzled, unpossessed
on the ledge of plains
factional roof
meager walls written upon
like points of long prairie grass
the house stares across the highway
as though remembering a fir tree
carried on horseback
through blinding snow.


III

Survival of facade
when content does not endure
one part has nothing to do with the others
all is hollow
ramshackled
but house still stands on prairie
customs still leap on points
of delicate prairie grass
where the bright bauble of the eye
blinked once too often.

--Diane Glancy (1941- ), Cherokee American poet, from One Age in a Dream, 1986.

Forgiveness

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!


-John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), American Quaker poet

"More Than a Woman"

Ever since I woke up today, 
a song has been playing uncontrollably
in my head—a tape looping

over the spools of the brain,
a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun,
mad fan belt of a tune.

It must have escaped from the radio
last night on the drive home
and tunneled while I slept

from my ears to the center of my cortex.
It is a song so cloying and vapid
I won’t even bother mentioning the title,

but on it plays as if I were a turntable
covered with dancing children
and their spooky pantomimes,

as if everything I had ever learned
was being slowly replaced
by its slinky chords and the puff-balls of its lyrics.

It played while I watered the plants
and continued when I brought in the mail
and fanned out the letters on a table.

It repeated itself when I took a walk
and watched from a bridge
brown leaves floating in the channels of a current.

Late in the afternoon it seemed to fade,
but I heard it again at the restaurant
when I peered in at the lobsters

lying on the bottom of an illuminated
tank which was filled to the brim 
with their copious tears.

And now at this dark window
in the middle of the night
I am beginning to think

I could be listening to music of the spheres,
the sound no one ever hears
because it has been playing forever,

only the spheres are colored pool balls,
and the music is oozing from a jukebox
whose lights I can just make out through the clouds.

--Billy Collins, from Aimless Love, 2013.

Indian Boarding School: The Runaways

Home’s the place we head for in our sleep.
Boxcars stumbling north in dreams
don’t wait for us. We catch them on the run.
The rails, old lacerations that we love,
shoot parallel across the face and break
just under Turtle Mountains. Riding scars
you can’t get lost. Home is the place they cross.

The lame guard strikes a match and makes the dark
less tolerant. We watch through cracks in boards
as the land starts rolling, rolling till it hurts
to be here, cold in regulation clothes.
We know the sheriff’s waiting at midrun
to take us back. His car is dumb and warm.
The highway doesn’t rock, it only hums
like a wing of long insults. The worn-down welts
of ancient punishments lead back and forth.

All runaways wear dresses, long green ones,
the color you would think shame was. We scrub
the sidewalks down because it's shameful work.
Our brushes cut the stone in watered arcs
and in the soak frail outlines shiver clear
a moment, things us kids pressed on the dark
face before it hardened, pale, remembering
delicate old injuries, the spines of names and leaves.



--Louise Erdrich (1954- ), Ojibway poet and novelist, from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems, 2003.

Photo: Students at Carlisle Indian School.

Miscegenation

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name
begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi.

A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the same
as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.

Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name
for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.

My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.
I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.

When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year—you’re the same
age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.

I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name—
though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.


--Natasha Trethewey (1966- ), African American poet, US Poet Laureate 2012- 2014, from Native Guard, 2007, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Photo: Richard and Mildred Loving, whose lawsuit declared miscegenation laws unconstitutional on June 12, 1967,  from Time magazine.

Prayer for Unity in Pandemic

God of the Sparrow, God of the Wren,

God of the Honeybee toiling with purpose
among the blossoming fields,
pitch your tent among us today,
and lead us into holiness, empathy, and truth.

Abiding One,
may we make your wisdom our nourishment;
may we be led by compassion against fear,
and live into unity with each other.
May we bear each other's burden with generous hearts,
and, strengthened by your love and constancy,
resist the death-normalizing ways of fear and faithlessness.

May we care for each other with one accord,
and testify to the power of your hope, O God.

Comfort the weary and strengthen the healers,
O Merciful One,
and grant the blessing of your Spirit
to all who turn to You in supplication,
especially those we now name.

Amen.

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, 

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. 

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies 

Darken with kindness. 

They have come gladly out of the willows 

To welcome my friend and me. 

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture 

Where they have been grazing all day, alone. 

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness 

That we have come. 

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. 

There is no loneliness like theirs. 

At home once more, 

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. 

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, 

For she has walked over to me 

And nuzzled my left hand. 

She is black and white, 

Her mane falls wild on her forehead, 

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear 

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. 

Suddenly I realize 

That if I stepped out of my body I would break 

Into blossom.


-- James Wright (1927-1980), American poet, from Above the River: The Complete Poems & Selected Prose (edited by Anne Wright), 1990.

The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

----Louise Gluck (1943- ), American poet, and teacher, US Poet Laureate 2003,  awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2020. Poem from The Wild Iris, 1992.

Vespers ["Once, I believed in you"]

Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
Here, in Vermont, country
of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
it would mean you existed.

By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist
exclusively in warmer climates,
in fervent Sicily and Mexico and California,
where are grown the unimaginable
apricot and fragile peach. Perhaps
they see your face in Sicily; here we barely see
the hem of your garment. I have to discipline myself
to share with John and Noah the tomato crop.

If there is justice in some other world, those
like myself, whom nature forces
into lives of abstinence, should get
the lion's share of all things, all
objects of hunger, greed being
praise of you. And no one praises
more intensely than I, with more
painfully checked desire, or more deserves
to sit at your right hand, if it exists, partaking
of the perishable, the immortal fig,
which does not travel.

--Louise Gluck (1943- ), American poet,  and teacher, US Poet Laureate 2003,  awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2020 announced today, the first American so honored since Toni Morrison in 1993. Poem from The Wild Iris, 1992.

Photo by Christine Grillo, From Last Word on Nothing blog, "Guest Post: The Death of a Fig Tree: My Climate Change" found here.

Vespers ["In your extended absence, you permit me"]

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.

--Louise Gluck (1943- ), American poet,  and teacher, US Poet Laureate 2003,  awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2020 announced today, the first American so honored since Toni Morrison in 1993. Poem from The Wild Iris, 1992.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


-- William Carlos Williams, (1883-1963), Puerto Rican-American poet, author, and physician

Prayers of the People for Indigenous Peoples Day

For Indigenous Peoples Day

In Thanksgiving for Mother Earth, who sustains our very life, especially during this season of bountiful harvest, we pray.

In Thanksgiving for Native Americans, who lived for millennia in harmony with Mother Earth, may the leaders of all countries listen to the wisdom of their native peoples and work to make the drastic changes necessary in how we live on Earth, we pray.

In thanksgiving for our Native American sisters and brothers of this region, as we remember that we live on the land, that the Potawatomi peoples once called home, we pray.

For Native Americans and 1st Nation Peoples, as they strive to bring back their languages and cultures and confront the problems of poverty and hunger on so many reservations and in so many cities and towns, we pray.

That the church gathered last year in the Synod on the Amazon will learn from the indigenous peoples of that region and speak out, acting to protect them from the attacks upon them and upon the rain forest that is their home, we pray.

That the Catholic Church may be forgiven for its colonial attitudes and destructive actions and be reconciled with indigenous peoples everywhere in respectful and mutual encounter, dialogue, and lived faith in our one God, we pray.

For those indigenous around the planet that are suffering so disproportionately from the Covid-19 Pandemic, for their healing and for an end to the systemic injustices that left them so vulnerable, we pray.

That our Church, responding with courage to the signs of our times, may embrace integral ecological conversion and preach it with prophetic urgency, we pray.


Presider: O God of all peoples, enlighten our minds and soften our hearts so that we will be open to healing and life-giving change. Enable us to see each other and all the creatures of our Mother Earth with eyes like Yours. Call us to a new awareness of the sacredness of creation and the beauty in its diversity so that we may contribute to a world where there is harmony, justice, and lasting peace. We make our prayer in the name of Christ and in the power of Your Holy Spirit where we live and move and have our being now and forever. Amen.

Found at the Dominican Center,  https://www.dominicancenter.org/indigenous-peoples-day-liturgy/

 

Forgive Me

Angels are wonderful but they are so, well, aloof.

It’s what I sense in the mud and the roots of the
trees, or the well, or the barn, or the rock with
its citron map of lichen that halts my feet and
makes my eyes flare, feeling the presence of some
spirit, some small god, who abides there.

If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing
continuously.
I’m not, though I pause wherever I feel this
holiness, which is why I’m so often late coming
back from wherever I went.

Forgive me.


--Mary Oliver, from Blue Horses, 2014

Prayer: Sustained by God's Love

The One who calls each tiny wren beloved
has called us to rise and rejoice:
come, let us adore our Living God.
Governor of the Worlds,
Ground of All Being,
your love sustains us and nourishes us,
bringing our hearts to full flower:
shape us and guide us this day.

May we journey this day
with Jesus as our companion and teacher;
and embody his healing presence
with integrity, honor, and beauty.

Fount of All Wisdom,
may we ever serve you with boldness,
proclaiming your saving power within our lives
as we turn our shoulders to the wheel of compassion
and serve each other with grace and truth.
May we link arms and wills
against the surging power of injustice and oppression,
knit together in love and faithfulness
to bear testimony to your glory, Lord Christ.

Blessed Savior, pour out your grace
upon those who turn to you in prayer and hope,
and grant your blessing to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,

I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.


--Billy Collins (1941- ), American poet, US poet laureate, from Nine Horses: Poems, 2002