Today's selection of poems talk about the meeting of  strangers and the intersection of disparate lives, how we all inhabit different worlds and how we struggle to find common ground. Poetry itself can offer us a glimpse into  a deeper awareness of our surroundings, our connections to each other, and the immediate and sacred essence of life. It can bring us out of the commonplace into a miraculous other world, or show us our everyday world transformed into the miraculous. 

Some of the poems also talk about the subject of faith in various ways, and about the idea of prayer as not being separate from daily routine.  There is a tenet of Buddhist philosophy that suggests we use the practice of mindfulness to bring a feeling of holy ritual to mundane actions like washing the dishes or making a meal. In this way, all our actions become sacred, and worship or meditation is not set apart from the rest of life.

- Rima Snyder

Pray for Peace

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:

Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,

his suffering face bent to kiss you,

Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,

Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary

that she may lay her palm on our brows,

to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,

to Inanna in her stripped descent.

 

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work. 


On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus, 


for everyone riding buses all over the world. 


Drop some silver and pray.

 

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM, 


for your latte and croissant, offer your plea. 


Make your eating and drinking a supplication. 


Make your slicing of carrots a holy act, 


each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

 

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray. 


Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats. 


Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

 

Make the brushing of your hair 
a prayer,

every strand its own voice, 


singing in the choir on your head. 


As you wash your face, the water slipping 


through your fingers, a prayer: Water, 


softest thing on earth, gentleness 


that wears away rock.

 

Making love, of course, is already prayer. 


Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin, 


the fragile cases we are poured into.

 

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.


Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day. 


Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

 

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox, 


to the video store, let each step 


be a prayer that we all keep our legs, 


that we do not blow off anyone else's legs. 


Or crush their skulls. 


And if you are riding on a bicycle 


or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution 


of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves: 


less harm, less harm, less harm.

 

And as you work, typing with a new manicure, 


a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail 


or delivering soda or drawing good blood 


into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard 


with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas—

 

With each breath in, take in the faith of those 


who have believed when belief seemed foolish, 


who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

 

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace, 


feed the birds, each shiny seed 


that spills onto the earth, another second of peace. 


Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk. 


Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child 


around your VISA card. Scoop your holy water 


from the gutter. Gnaw your crust. 


Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling 


your prayer through the streets.                                                Ellen Bass

 

If You Knew

What if you knew you'd be the last

to touch someone?

If you were taking tickets, for example,

at the theater, tearing them,

giving back the ragged stubs,

you might take care to touch that palm,

brush your fingertips

along the life line's crease.

 

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase

too slowly through the airport, when

the car in front of me doesn't signal,

when the clerk at the pharmacy

won't say Thank you, I don't remember

they're going to die.

 

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.

They'd just had lunch and the waiter,

a young gay man with plum black eyes,

joked as he served the coffee, kissed

her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.

Then they walked half a block and her aunt

dropped dead on the sidewalk.

 

How close does the dragon's spume

have to come? How wide does the crack

in heaven have to split?

What would people look like

if we could see them as they are,

soaked in honey, stung and swollen,

reckless, pinned against time?                                    Ellen Bass

(read by Bettye Barclay)

 

The poems I have chosen for this morning both have a personal connection for me, and both of them deal with the themes of permanence and change. They each describe a shared experience between strangers, a brief encounter that provides insight into a different way of life . They also touch on the subject of faith, a solid foundation of belief that the poets seem to yearn for and perhaps admire, but not to possess for themselves.

Local southern California poet Dick Barnes, who lived from 1932 to 2000, lived in Claremont and taught at Pomona College, where I studied as an undergraduate. In 1994, when he published the collection of poems called "Few and Far Between", from which this poem is taken, he was married to a friend of mine from high school. He  dedicates the book to her and includes a reference to one of my favorite Thelonious Monk tunes, "Ruby My Dear".  Though I never knew him, the fact that we have people, a school, a town, and a great jazz song in common makes his work speak to me in a very direct way. This poem is called "Dusk Was Falling."

Dusk Was Falling

As dusk was falling I came to a cabin:

yellow lamplight fell from its windows

onto the bluewhite snow, and inside

were hospitable people, a man and wife

who invited me "Come in and get warm."

Fire in a woodstove, a kerosene lamp,

shelves of books, that cabin odor -

O, and coffee left over, that I took

in rustic comfortable rocking chair,

hardwood branches bent to shape

with the bark still on them, and shellacked.

They were on vacation, but as we talked

they let me feel what weight life had

for them, and they felt mine.

Their son had disappeared, they didn't know why;

he started home from college in his car

and was never heard from. It was the Lord's way,

they thought, but couldn't understand. Would I pray

for them, and for their son? I said

I'd pray the best I could for us all,

and lingered there for a while, cherished

in their cabin, a son to their need,

while outside night came on and it got colder.

I had my own journey to go, and it

wasn't getting any shorter;

I believe I stayed about long enough,

so they were glad to see me go

and the cabin warmth hadn't got in me

so deep a few quick shivers

wouldn't shake it away, in the cold.

There wasn't a moon, but the stars were close

and the snow gave back their light;

I could see my breath in the still air,

like a little friend, that I'd leave behind,

again, and again, and again.                                                Dick Barnes, 1994

 

The second poem, called "Inevitable Move," was written in 2002 by Aliki Barnstone, whom I met when we were both children, because her parents knew the parents of my best friend.  She published her first book of poems at the age of 12, and somewhere in the collection of things I have in storage, I hope I still have an autographed copy. I came across this book, "Wild With It," while browsing through Powell's Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, which is a sort of Mecca for book lovers. The fact that I discovered it among their vast collection of books is a remarkable bit of serendipity. This poem also speaks directly to me, although our specific experiences are very different. It talks about being on the move, a nomad in the land of people with settled lives and beliefs.

Inevitable Move

When I take my daughter to the Mennonite woman

who cares for her on afternoons, we pass

the old brick Groves mill, winter cornfields,

neat Pennsylvania Dutch farms, red barns

with solid stone foundations and long white louvers,

painted signs next to the mailboxes proclaiming faith:

on the way there, Let us draw nigh unto the Lord,

and All things were created by God; on the way home,

Come follow Jesus Christ and I owe the Lord a morning song.

The road curves like a dreamy explorer around hills,

under amicable sycamores huddled together, abreast the river,

then over it on two bridges, one steel, one stone.

 

In the back Zoë babbles at what she sees

through the rear windshield: treetops reach fingertips

toward the colorless sun, tin roofs glint with winter austerity.

Look, Zoë ! I call, See three fat geese in the yard!

See the cows! See so many crows in the corn!

(I can't help thinking of Van Gogh's cornfield.

All this beauty will be buried soon in the dirt

of my memory, most of it for good, and Zoë  will see it

not at all or in that distant home of dreaming and learning

where a door might be ajar, letting in a slit of light

but no shapes, nothing with a name.)

I wish I could stand barefoot in spring mud

and mortar stone after stone in a wall forever

and plant a Rose-of-Sharon with faith, and never leave.

If I could be like these farmers with their old brick  houses,

their history and their mission, I would sing

the Lord a morning song and bless all creation

and stretch my hands toward the supernatural face.

 

No such luck. I kiss my baby bye bye,

be back soon.  Sue holds out her hands

long-fingered and brown, smiles a lovely gap-tooth smile.

My girl flails in gentle arms and wails out her loss

as I drive away, sending up hundreds of crows,

black angels protesting over the implacable landscape.                        Aliki Barnstone, 2002

(read by Rima Snyder)

 

A Wasp Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison

After explanations and regulations, he

Walked warily in.

Black hair covered his chin, subscribing to

Villainous ideal.

“This can not be real,” he thought, “this is a

Classical mistake;

This is a cake baked with embarrassing icing;

Somebody’s got

Likely as not, a big fat tongue in cheek!

What have I do

With a prim and proper-blooded lady?”

Christ in deed has risen

When a Junkie in prison visits with a Wasp woman.

 

“Hold your stupid face, man,

Learn a little grace, man; drop a notch the sacred shield.

She might have good reason,

Like: 'I was in prison and ye visited me not,’ or—some such.

So sweep clear

Anachronistic fear, fight the fog,

And use no hot words."
 

After the seating

And the greeting, they fished for a denominator,

Common or uncommon;

And could only summon up the fact that both were human.

“Be at ease, man!

Try to please, man! —the lady is as lost as you:

“ 'You got children, Ma’am?' ” he said aloud.

The thrust broke the dam, and their lines wiggled in the water.

She offered no pills

To cure his many ills, no compact sermons, but small

And funny talk;

“My baby began to walk…simply cannot keep his room clean…”

Her chatter sparked no resurrection and truly

No shackles were shaken

But after she had taken her leave, he walked softly,

And for hours used no hot words.                                                            Etheridge Knight

 

Haiku

Making jazz swing in

Seventeen syllables ain’t

No square poet’s job.                          Etheridge Knight

(read by Carrie Lauer, selected by Peggy Rhoads)