Slowing Down to Engage the Harvest

source

(1)

On Fall Equinox she begins two lists

in preparation for the new years of

the Semitic and Celtic traditions—

events she’s borrowed to organize time.

List time harvests her year’s experience:

its highs and lows, wins and losses, changes

of direction, processes, products and

unfinished business. 

List time revises

past lists and poems, blog posts and fallow fields

of dreams. 

List time slows down emotions that

hurried and blinded her to her power.

List time acknowledges offenses, asks

forgiveness, feeds the hungry, drinks deeply.

(2)

She’ll burn the first at Hallowmas:

what she wills herself to cease clinging to

in habit, thought and deed—what deadened walls

she’s built and joined that should admit sunlight—

what walls under construction need delays

and alterations—more, too.

Gently, but

determinedly, she turns awareness toward

details, powerful possibilities

hidden by running, hiding, hoarding and

averting eyes from what she knows inside.

(3)

She’ll love the second, claiming and listing

those qualities and leadings she’ll nurture

forward into their next incarnations,

fruit she’ll preserve and bulbs she’ll plant alone

or with others, her prayers and positive

inclinations—

babies to feed and learn

from, youth to teach, empower and befriend,

movements to join, support and further 
                                                                                    one

step after another, no going back,

no fear of change and strange and fire this time.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

Not the Equality that I Long For

Each post seems alike

at first glance, and we

lose perspective when

we skim late social

invites and faces

of friends, strangers and

dogs side by side with

protest announcements,

inspirational

quotes, loving prayers,

Black Lives Matter and

New videos of

uni-formed police

shooting un-armed men

of color, un-armed

men of color shot

dead, bombings of old

world cities, rescues

of babies, music,

recipes, riots

and tear gas, but we

know Black Lives Matter

And read tracts on white

fragility and I-

can’t-pledge-allegiance-

to-this-country, not

until it acts on

its declaration

of equality,

kinship and other

opinions that don’t

matter once shots fired

take another life.

We open pages

to learn when and where

we can be useful

and try not to fall

down other paths as

we seek right use of

marches, sit-ins and

boycotts.  We look for

allies and moral 

perspectives to use

seven days a week.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

Something to do with Equality

Logo of the International Day of Peace organization

On the International Day of Peace

consider the Autumnal Equinox

that follows in the Northern Hemisphere:

Between half years of traded dominance

and submission—one waxing while one wanes—

earth’s Night and Day are equal twice a year

Thus earth's tilt alters Night and Day as moon

affects the ocean tides, certain and sure

despite disturbing storms and eclipses.

And some say opposites like war and peace

follow nature’s patterns of power pull

and push, and thus are inevitable.

But some say violence is like those storms

on earth and sun that knock out natural

patterns of give and take among equals.

That we can use a few hours of truce

to study human ignorance and to
control  the storms that threaten lives and food.

That it's hard enough to face global tides
               we have to tame to keep our earth alive.

               (These are the people who can help us thrive.)

For my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Equinox, Equator

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

September 16th, Twenty Sixteen in the Story of Justice

In this image made from a Friday, Sept. 16, 2016 police video, Terence Crutcher, center, is pursued by police officers as he walk to an SUV in Tulsa, Okla. Crutcher was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead after he was shot by the officer around 8 p.m., Friday, police said. Crutcher had no weapon on him or in his SUV, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said Monday, Sept. 19, 2016. (Tulsa Police Department via AP) (The Associated Press)

When police tazed and shot a Black man in Tulsa,

I was home reading a novel and watching TV movies

whose names I cannot remember.

It’s a war out there. On this side of the equator,

nights lengthen toward equality but darkness

continues to grow in our land.

Video cam footage (which does not lie) increasingly

reveals the violence of superiority and fear

in the souls of our supposed protectors.

Can we doubt any longer that Black people

are targeted by police? even if, yes, the police 

we know couldn’t and wouldn’t murder? 

The origin of policing in slave times to protect and retrieve

property that stole itself away from slavery, the origin of policing 

to prevent Black people from being human left traces

in the unbridled behaviors of some cops with guns

but we are all responsible when we don’t find the solution,

when we retain laws to set these killers free.

The novel I was reading plotted a violent war among gods 

and godlike men and women who cannot transform 

until they are all killed in battle.

Those who willingly sacrifice themselves so others may live

come alive again, but they didn’t know that as they prepared

themselves to walk selflessly into their fate.

If these saints come marching in, I want to be their number.

But see?  I am already setting up conditions, a price for

involvement.  Can I, can we, ever place justice first?

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

Awake in the Harvest Moon

Panorama of the Taurus-Littrow valley on the moon, by Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan (1972)

Moonshine pours tonight, spills

over my dark heart.  Thank God for Moon.

Mankind hasn’t tinkered there quite yet,

though there’s some trash, for sure

But no one’s hit oil there,

not that we’d know about it.  Pipelines

are pretty much a done deed before

dished up to land dwellers.

And as far as I know

the Moon has no water to pollute.

Anyway, Moon shines like day tonight

reminding me to howl

at my true future home

like some old storyland coyote.

A child’s dream, I recall it daily

while picking up the trash.

Now the lawn is clean, but
looks too tall in the light of the moon.

I won’t miss grass, but I’ll miss shade trees

when I’m home on the moon.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

No Longer Sitting Still to Face Injustice

Head of a Girl  by Paula Modersohn-Becker (1906)

How Life Hurts

and how Life pleases

for every stand we make

and step we take.

Not the pleasure-pain in one-on-one relationships—

not feelings and sensations of the moment—

but the essence of existence

(the opposite of meaninglessness)

that compels us to leave our world

better than we found it.

How Life Hurts

and how Life pleases!

For every stand we make

and step we take 

essence expands in reality and idea

          (essence or spirit, what do y'call the force-within?

           Spirit, the Essence of Existence, God or Life)

surfacing in feeling and sensation

but not satisfied in those realms

it re-appears in behaviors.

Life hurts and pleases

for every stand we make,

answering the question

Why live at all?

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast