Speaking of Obligations....(4)

A speck of dust dreaming the cosmos.

One leaf, singing all the forests of the earth.

A photon, carrying incandescence from

the first great shattering light.

My brain,

with all of it’s billions

of possible connections still, still

still overcome by the night.

(4th in a series on the Long Obligatory Prayer.)

Speaking of Obligations: (3) Aftershocks

“The grass our fathers cut away

is growing on their graves today.”

                        Marianne Moore

Before my own small tasks began

there were mighty earthworks raised in Ohio. 

The old people danced, cooked, prayed,

haggled, traded, and ran with abandon

through an encircled plaza.

Only trees dance there now.

I clean a spot on my kitchen floor,

and see it crumble into the future,

ants carrying away my layered life,

small birds nesting in places

that will inevitably fail.

Please, I say.  Teach me Your dance.

(Third in a series on the Long Obligatory Prayer.)

Speaking of Obligations....(2)

Veils

Women in burqa distress us—

touch us 

in a forgotten, airless place.

The burqas we wear

fit us so well we forget our discomfort.

Men wear them as well as women.

They look like fear.

I’m thinking of torching some of these veils,

and the only match available is this prayer.

                             Rhonda Palmer

Second in a series on the Long Obligatory Prayer

Speaking of Obligations... (1)

Gazing to the right I see my lost selves

in an old apple tree near the river. 

When they look to their right,

as they always do,

they see into a world I might have known.

Gazing to the left shows me light.

On a hot night in Texas I lay under clouds

alive with lightening.

My children lay with me in the dry grass,

speaking of electricity—

positive and negative energy—

while our gazes were gathered

into those glittering clouds. 

Now I stand and wait for the mercy of rain.
                    (Rhonda Palmer)




(This is the beginning of a series on a prayer said by Baha'is every day.  I love coming back to this prayer on such a frequent basis, as it's really myself I come back to.)  

The Greatest Gift

“Pooh” whispered Piglet.

“Yes, Piglet?” said Pooh.

“Oh, nothing,” said Piglet.

“I just wanted to be sure of you.”

“The greatest gift

we can give another

is our undivided attention.”

M. Scott Peck

Dreaming Peace by Alice Myerson

Dreaming peace

(in a warring time and place),

a flock of silver geese
rose from the rush of the reeds,
their feathers flushed 
with the promise of a late winter breeze.

The geese brushed off the tapestry
of a thousand and one ancient trees,
and laughed,
arching their slender necks back,
knees stretched,
straight and strong,
tails spread long.

Borne on the song
of the wings of the wind,
the geese pointed their webbed toes,
lifting off the moans
of a thousand and one
weeping souls.

Sifting peace 
above a raging sea,
the geese, as though drifting 
on a seamless time and place,
dreamed free.

They were interlocked with space,
the massive silver flock,
and they rocked as one, 
culling the power 
of the iridescent sun.

asm

Alice Myerson planted herself in the boogie down bronx way back when the world was young and has watched the seasons change there ever since. She is a mother, a lover, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, an hiv specialist, a human rights worker who quietly writes a poem or two, and sometimes even a story on the background of our turbulent, dynamic and ever fascinating world.

Poem for Ridván by Robert Hayden

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Bahá’u’lláh in the Garden of Ridván

Agonies confirm His hour,

and swords like compass-needles turn

toward His heart,

The midnight air is forested

with presences that shelter Him

and sheltering praise

The auroral darkness which is God

and sing the word made flesh again

in Him.

Eternal exile whose return

epiphanies repeatedly

foretell

He watches in a borrowed garden,

prays. And sleepers toss upon

their armored beds,

Half-roused by golden knocking at

the doors of consciousness. Energies

like angels dance

Glorias of recognition.

Within the rock the undiscovered suns

release their light.

                                    Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan.  Because he was nearsighted and slight of stature, he was often ostracized by his peer group. Hayden read voraciously, developing both an ear and an eye for transformative qualities in literature. He attended Detroit City College (Wayne State University), and left in 1936 to work for the Federal Writers' Project, where he researched black history and folk culture.

He was raised as a Baptist, and later became a member of the Bahá'í Faith during the early 1940s after marrying a Bahá'í, Erma Inez Morris. He is one of the best-known Bahá'í poets and his religion influenced much of his work.

After leaving the Federal Writers' Project in 1938, marrying Erma Morris in 1940, and publishing his first volume, Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940), Hayden enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1941 and won a Hopwood Award there.

In pursuit of a master's degree, Hayden studied under W. H. Auden, who directed Hayden's attention to issues of poetic form, technique, and artistic discipline, and influence may be seen in the "technical pith of Hayden's verse". After finishing his degree in 1942, then teaching several years at Michigan, Hayden went to Fisk University in 1946, where he remained for twenty-three years, returning to Michigan in 1969 to complete his teaching career.  He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1980 at the age 66.  from Wikipedia