Moon Missing, Allan Peterson

Moon Missing

BY ALLAN PETERSON

I was so worried the hickory I recognized

had died from salt burn in the last hurricane

I may have passed by vervain and apple haw

like they didn’t matter, but this spring

it put out seven shoots from its base.

Still, the oldest trick is the moon missing,

then the “new” moon appears,

though we know it’s the old one, and we pretend

to be taken in like the mother or baby

behind the bath towel.

Really it’s the moon winking,

being the stone that holds stones and now footprints.

And when I tell Frances, I see she is a moon

motionless in the doorway, skin reflecting

a lamp, a face that awakens on paper.

Allan Peterson, "Moon Missing" from Fragile Acts

Hallelujah, Mary Oliver

Halleluiah

 

Everyone should be born into this world happy

and loving everything.

But in truth it rarely works that way.

For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.

Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

 

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes

almost forgetting how wondrous the world is

and how miraculously kind some people can be?

And have you too decided that probably nothing important

is ever easy?

Not, say, for the first sixty years.

 

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,

and some days I feel I have wings.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(Evidence)

 

The Land Of Plenty, Leonard Cohen

The Land of Plenty

 

Don't really have the courage

To stand where I must stand.

Don't really have the temperament

To lend a helping hand.

 

Don't really know who sent me

To raise my voice and say:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

I don't know why I come here,

Knowing as I do,

What you really think of me,

What I really think of you.

 

For the millions in the prison,

That wealth has set apart - 

For the Christ who has not risen,

From the caverns of the heart -

 

For the innermost decision,

That we cannot but obey - 

For what's left of our religion,

I lift my voice and pray:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

I know I said I'd meet you,

I'd meet you at the store,

But I can't buy it, baby.

I can't buy it anymore.

 

And I don't really know who sent me,

To raise my voice and say:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

For the innermost decision

That we cannot but obey

For what's left of our religion

I lift my voice and pray:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

~ Leonard Cohen ~

 

Ten New Songs

 

Today I Have No Wisdom, David Whyte

Today I Have No Wisdom

 

I have walked blessed and bareheaded

on the seashore

with as little wisdom as the opened clam

its dead mouth streaming with sand

or the birds half sunk

in shallow halls of wood-trunk and tide pool.

 

I have listened with the small acuity of

crabshell on rock

of water falling through sand

of the tide coming home

to welcome on by boot-tops

and always

moving everywhere

the sea air is running hands over my open neck.

 

I have never learned to tread quietly here

where sounds are always rushing on the beach

or upward with the gulls,

on an open beach

a voice can be tenacious in the wind

and the chest heaves to snatch a breath

and cry again.

 

For today I have no wisdom but that of sand

heaving from some dream that sleeps beneath the tide

until I come with my voice bellowing

and my small child's heart

and I walk through the sea-spume

like a man walking through sparks

or an intense fire where the heart ignites

and explodes leaving nothing

not an ember of wisdom to warm me

 

It is all consumed in the moment

the dazzling

upward

 

flame of pure presence.

 

~ David Whyte ~

 

(Songs for Coming Home)

 

Mary, Queen of the Ordinary, Irene Zimmerman

Litany for the Ordinary

Irene Zimmerman

Mary, Queen of the ordinary, 
queen of spinning wheel and loom
who wove from ordinary stuff
the flawless fabric of
God's humanness;
queen whose pregnancy
put Joseph's other plans aside
and sent his saw singing
into cradlewood;
queen of water jars daily filled,
of swaddling clothes spread outdoors
to dry, of scrubbed floors
and everlastingly sawdusty son;
queen of skinned knees,
splintered fingers,
aching stomach, fevered head,
herbal teas;
queen of fresh-baked bread
whose wheaty power
put flesh on growing boy
and joy at evening meal--
Mary, queen of ordinary time and space,
thank you for your ordinary grace.

Saint Mary's Press book excerpt © 2000 Saint Mary's Press. 

The Gids Among Us, C. Dale Young

The Gods Among Us

BY C. DALE YOUNG

One of them grants you the ability

to forecast the future; another wrenches

your tongue from your mouth, changes you

into a bird precisely because you have been

given this gift. The gods are generous

 

in this way. I learned to avoid danger, avoid fear,

avoid excitement, these the very triggers that prompt

my wings from their resting place deep inside.

And so, I avoided fights, avoided everything really.

In the locker room, I avoided other boys,

 

all the while intently studying that space

between their shoulder blades, patiently looking

for the tell-tale signs, looking to find even

one other boy like me, the wings buried but

there nonetheless. I studied them from a distance.

 

When people challenge a god, the gods curse them

with the label of madness. It is all very convenient.

And meanwhile, a god took the form of a swan

and raped a girl by the school gates. Another

took the shape of an eagle to abduct a boy

 

from the football field. Mad world.

And what about our teachers? Our teachers

expected us to sit and listen. In Theology, there was

a demon inside each of us; in History,

the demons among us. So many demons

 

in this world. Who among us could have spoken up

against the gods, the gods who continued living

among us? They granted wishes and punishments

much the way they always had. Very few noticed them

casually taking the shape of one thing or another.

 

C. Dale Young, "The Gods Among Us" from The Halo. Copyright © 2016 by C. Dale Young

The Birth of Superstition, Lynn Pedersen

 The Birth of Superstition

BY LYNN PEDERSEN

It’s not hard to imagine: my ancestor—a dry season,

               dust like chalk on her tongue—mixes

                              spit with clay,

 

traces a river on rock. Next day: rain.

 

                                                                           Why shouldn’t she believe

               in the power of rock and her own hand?

 

I carry this need for pattern and rule, to see connections

               where there aren’t necessarily any.

 

                                                            After my first miscarriage,

I cut out soda, cold cuts.

 

               After the second, vacuuming and air travel.

 

After the third—it’s chalk and spit again. I circle rocks,

               swim the icy river.

 

                                             And when my son is born, he balances

the chemical equation that is this world.

 

                                                                                          And logic?

 

Logic is my son’s kite, good so long as you have

               wind, string,

                                             something heavier than hope

 

                                                                                          to tether you.

 

Lynn Pedersen, "The Birth of Superstition" from The Nomenclature of Small Things.  Copyright © 2016 by Lynn Pedersen