A prayer for more life

 

source

Let earth be eternal,
but not unchanging.  Let
life on earth heal itself,
befriending each other
into trustfulness.
 
Let humans survive in
right relationship with
other life, giving up
supremacy to gain
harmony and neighbors.
 
Let each of us be as
mother earth, embracing
difference, giving
and taking just enough in
a gift economy.
 
Let us love earth intact,
finding alternative
ways to meet our needs, not
using up its last land
and squeezing it to death.
 
Let us learn from earth’s own
creatures how to care for
and accept all of us—
so we heal society
and its transgressors.
 
Let us believe in an
ability to learn,
an eternal value
that will help us survive
into integrity.

For my prompt "Eternal / Unchanging" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Pandemic memories, 3 years later

 

Mortuary Trucks in New York City in April 2020 by Archer West

I was happy to stay home during the pandemic—
a retired recluse, home was my comfort zone.
Besides, Zoom came out of nowhere, and soon
I was attending more meetings than ever before.
 
News was full of the bravery of medical
personnel who deployed ventilators and stayed
in hospitals with barely enough masks to block infection
spread by air or proximately or maybe touching. 
 
At first, visitors weren’t allowed, increasing the horror
of Covid-19, ventilator, isolation, and potential death.
I became obsessed with the number of dead bodies.
I became obsessed with the burial of the dead.
 
In New York City, morgues couldn’t keep up,
so the city rented refrigerator trucks to handle
the overflow, over 2000 dead in the first four months. 
Bodies were kept “on ice” until they could be buried.
 
Unidentified bodies were kept for variable lengths of time
before burial in mass graves on Hart Island, NYC’s potter’s
field.  Heart Island, I told myself, burial Is a kindness
to those waiting, to both the living and the dead.

For Mary's prompt "The Days We Stayed Apart" at What's Going On? 

See also, from 6 May 2020, "Burying the Dead"

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Starry night

 

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh  (1889)

 

Eleven stars and a crescent moon gleam
so brightly that dark night flows around them,
 
and below, town and orchard stand in line,
tame and solid despite the wild night.
 
To witness such divinity takes grace,
and Van Gogh, whatever else he faced,
 
had an eye for glory beyond a grim town
that neither cypress nor steeple could drown.
 
He burst bonds of civilization
and flew into blue imagination
 
riding the storms of creativity
that don’t rest for troubled humanity.
 
This is how we who stand on earth can dream
in shades of blue, black, yellow, and green--
 
seeing the outlines that hold the known world,
while above no outline contains the swirl.
 
New stars are being born every minute.
Our possibilities have no limit.

 

For Sumana's prompt "Ekphrastic Poetry" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Hope is work

 

A sculpture of Jane Goodall and David Greybeard outside the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago  (Source)

 

Hope is the work of a far-seeing woman
who still teaches past her death.
Jane Goodall was barely on my radar,
so wrapped up was I in the politic of war
that rocks my country and other countries
of the world.  But stand under a tree,
stand in the arid land of drought, or stand
in the life of chimpanzees like Jane Goodall did,
and other windows open to see earth, and
to see how we humans are part of nature.
 
We have roles to play as part of the natural world.
What matters?  Look out the windows to see
what living things need, to see where there is pain: 
All life needs water, clean air, food, a planet. 
A home for the future.  Is there evil to be destroyed? 
Yes, but is it the primary work we have to do
for hope to thrive?  Along with a ground-swell of
respect, non-violence, empathy, and cooperation
to build hope.  That is the work which
we cannot give up, according to Jane.

 

For Sherry's prompt "A Message from Jane Goodall" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

After sunrise

 

source

Bright sun exposes everything.
Fascism spreads terror city by city.
Fascism creates its necessary villains and then strikes
Democrats, immigrants, children of immigrants.
 
Bright sun exposes everything.
Cities keep on living around the terror.
Bystanders witness and make noise
that resounds in the canyons of minds.
 
Bright sun exposes everything.
Maple leaves change from green to yellow
and drift down to where late tomatoes grow
and to the green grounds around safety zones.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Weariness sets in

 

Girl sleeping by Domenico Fetti (1615)
source

Weariness guides feet into the forest.
Weariness guides steps into the city.
Weariness sits with me on the bus and in my living room
where I open my laptop to check email and Facebook,
and feel my nose and chin fall to the keyboard, eyes closed.
I’m wiped out from the moments I get dressed in the morning
to the hour I climb into bed—nap or bedtime—and I sleep.
Sleep deep. 
I’ve tried cures: vitamins, breathing more air in fewer breaths,
aerobic exercises, and physical therapy.  I haven’t tried pills,
but I’ve tried “summer reading” instead of listening to news.
I’ve pretended all is well in my nation: that experts and scientists
run the departments of government with enough employees
to do the job, that we value our treaties and promises to those
we’ve allowed into our country.  That we value democracy.
That we value women, that we value the rich diversity of us.
And it helps.  It helps to get angry
imagining how life could be, anger
overrides the weariness enough
to make one more effort
before weariness sets in again.
Then I look for anger again, or for one friend who gets it,
who maybe brings over another mailing list, or another picket sign,
because we can’t give up.  We are the resistance.
We are the non-violent, alert and enthusiastic, revolution.

For my prompt "Weariness" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast