Count the one beautiful blue and green planet.
Count it again.
Say “home,” then marvel at the taste of tears.
Notice how no borders matter from here.
Remember how important they feel
when standing on a border. Once
you dreamt of being alone. Of being
far away from parking lots and grocery store lines
and men with guns and violent conviction.
Now you dream of touching someone else,
of breathing in the scent of garden dirt,
of hearing a voice without static, of lying down
in a bed, held by your own sweet gravity.
What you would do to taste a tree-ripened peach.
Give up on counting stars. Draw lines between them,
creating your own constellations:
The open hand. The river gorge. The crooked evergreen.
A semi-automatic rifle, which you re-constellate
into a small bouquet of lilies. Consider forgiveness.
Wonder how long it will take before it feels authentic.
Circling has taught you how things come around.
Remember? There was a time you didn’t think
you knew how to pray.
Posts Tagged ‘prayer’
In Orbit
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, earth, prayer, space, violence on March 26, 2021| 6 Comments »
This Difficult Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss, prayer, spring on March 22, 2021| 3 Comments »
Today the prayer is words
I can’t yet find,
words that flit away
like spring juncos, like chickadees.
Today the prayer I wish for
is not the prayer that finds me—
less like the perfume of a fully bloomed flower
more like the dank and fusty scent of spring.
Some days when I forget how to pray,
if I listen with my whole body,
the world reminds me how what is used up, spent
is also a vessel for the holy,
as dry leaves become a nest
as bare branches hold the sunrise.
Amen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged drought, green, patience, prayer, rain, reslilience on July 21, 2020| 4 Comments »
Oh green, I miss you,
miss how you used
to flourish in me,
no matter how brittle,
how brown I’d become.
I didn’t know then
I took you for granted.
I miss your softness,
your tenderness,
all the promise inside you,
the sunlight you carry
in your veins.
Some days I remember
what it is to be green.
Some days, when it’s gray,
I tell myself green is possible again.
Some days, when the rain
still doesn’t fall,
I practice how to break.
Some days, I swear I’ll find a way
to become green again,
no matter how unlikely,
how parched this field.
Somedays, though I long since
forgot how to pray,
the prayers find me anyway
and my empty hands
will not come down.
Transformation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, prayer, rain, storm, transformation on July 17, 2020| 9 Comments »
You need a rainstorm.
—Paula Lepp
I need a rainstorm
on the inside, the kind
that relentlessly pours,
the kind that rearranges
everything, leaves nothing
untouched. I need a deluge
that drowns out any voices
that would offer easy answers.
I need a cloudburst to flood
everything I think I know,
that carries me until I, too, am current.
Have I gotten so dry inside,
so brittle and sure?
Give me a gulley washer,
the kind that scours
and remakes its path as it flows.
I want it, and yet
when I feel the first drops
I scramble for the umbrella,
as if it would do any good.
There it is, petrichor—
earthy fragrance of change.
The big rain will come when it comes.
There will be no stopping it then.
Reluctant Prayer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing things to be, prayer, surrender on May 20, 2020| 4 Comments »
inspired by a conversation with Craig Childs
Let it come, says the voice,
a voice not quite mine,
and somehow more my voice
than any other.
Let it come.
And by let, it means,
Open your hands,
And by it, it means
Anything.
And by come, it means,
You be still. Enough running,
enough fighting, enough
pushing away.
Meet the world that’s here.
I close my eyes,
and an invisible cage lifts.
Let it come, says the voice,
and I move my lips with it
until the prayer
is my own.
Ephemeral Prayer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged laughter, prayer, science, sun on April 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »
In five billion years, the hydrogen fuel
at the core of the sun will be spent.
Forces of gravity will take over,
compressing the core. The rest of the sun
will expand, vaporizing the earth.
I’ve studied the science, read the texts.
In the meantime, I live in a canyon
with rock walls one-hundred-fifty million years old—
and sometimes, like this morning,
despite rumors of doom,
the forces of gravity take over
and I fall on the floor laughing—
a riotous squealing and braying,
tears leaking, chest heaving,
grateful to big time for this very moment
when I am almost seamlessly joined with my shadow.
It rolls with me on the floor as I hoot and giggle,
praying in the language I know best.
How to Slice Open an Avocado
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avocado, food, Kyra Kopestonksky, new, prayer on January 18, 2020| 4 Comments »
After cutting open hundreds, thousands
of avocados, I marvel as my friend Kyra
cuts off the top. Slices it right off.
And I stare at her, at the knife, at the tip
of the avocado listing on the cutting board.
How easily she scoops out the creamy green flesh.
How simply she cuts more rounds around the pit.
All these years, I’ve sliced avocados lengthwise.
It’s as if I’ve just learned a new word for yes.
As if the sun itself just rose right here in the kitchen.
It takes so little to open us, to help us
see everything new. Even that prayer I pray
the same way. These hands. This common fruit.
A Little Secret
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, dinner, food, mac and cheese, poem, poetry, prayer on March 27, 2019| 5 Comments »
The white sauce whisked to smoothness
before the cheese is added,
and the elbow noodles boiled till they’re al dente,
the Pyrex buttered with long looping swirls of the fingers,
the cheddar spread evenly on top.
It is not easy for most people to see
devotion in the mac and cheese.
It doesn’t look like prayer.
But it’s there.
Literal
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, poem, poetry, prayer on January 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.
—Shakti Gawain
So I invite lanterns,
candles, torches, tapers,
street lights, spotlights,
glow worms, lasers,
wood matches, lighters
and one small prayer,
and at last I notice
it’s brighter around here.