An Artifact of the Real

Winter Solstice Eve: The sun will return

Everything has been given and received.   

If air-life-love is too enormous to see,

I will carve out a little piece of it

to wrap and place under your Christmas tree.

Perhaps a kite of paper and bamboo,

carrying these words and strung with my breath— 

one we fly up to the expanse of your

limitless existence, one we hang on

the wall to remind you of air-life-love.

Perhaps a candle with everlasting

wick and wax, to glow beyond gravity

and illuminate the Light burning here.

☼

In the Poets United Pantry, revised

First posted for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night ~ Week 125 

Copyright © 2013  S.L.Chast

I cut the 5th and 6th lines:

"I will shape an artifact of the real
as precious and pure as a saint’s relics"

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Good Morning

Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs

The Creator gave to me when I

And the tree and stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow

And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.

~ Maya Angelou, from “On the Pulse of the Morning”

(The Rock Cries Out To Us Today)

Sing with me.  Someone said to sing, and I cannot sing alone.

Sing, said the voice, “It’s now time to sing Peace on Earth.”

I’ve seen peace hide in my cook pot and in your bed. Good Morning.  

Sing Peace out into the open where it belongs.

No time to discover where the voice originates.  It is—

or it isn’t. Let’s sing, not knowing.  Let’s sing Peace.

Drones will drop from the sky in the instant.  Border guards will put

down their guns and lend a hand to those who need help.

Apples, cheese and sunflower seeds will erase hunger.  Water

will stream clear and potable in roadside ditches.

Sing, sing.  See how safely welcome opens doors.  See how ceilings

hold when bombs stop flying.  See children stop crying.

Sing ourselves into hope.  Believe it is now time to sing Peace

on Earth.   Sing in tune or out of key.  Both will do.

We’ve waited for our cue, and here it is. Now.  Peace on Earth.  Now.

Lift on the song, spondee or anapest. Peace On.

Earth Peace. On Earth. Peace On. Earth Peace. On Earth. Peace on Earth.  

Is it rising like sun at dawn?  Like moon and tides?

Is it rising invisible like ghosts or winds, that movement

reveals?  Let’s sing into movements, sing unto life.

It’s a good morning, indeed, when we wake ready and willing   

to bring peace out of hiding and make it flourish.

🎶🎶🎶

For Sumana's prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Peace On Earth

(After reading Angelou's poem, I had nothing more to say.  She says it all.)

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Gratitude

From the north rim of Grand Canyon National Park

for Peter                                               

Up on canyons’ rims

where seedlings find the best light

aging is thirsty.

“Know you do matter”

your five unexpected words

drop like gentle rain

and all of us trees

applaud from our deepest heart

where warm sap fuels earth.

Posted for my prompt Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Surprise!

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Depression

Edvard Munch - Melancholy (1911)

Call it the grand canyon, and walk across

or climb down once or twice every year.

So far, we’ve returned home successfully,

and wearily brushed dust from each worn heel.

We’ve come to see the trip as privileged,

part of leisure and too much time to think.

(Actually, parents ingrained that message,

while we pulled sprigs of pine out of our hair.)

Burdock is harder to remove from clothes

and brains.  It holds ideas stronger than blood,

longer than glue.  We think we’ve recovered

but follow grit and traces down again

without thinking.  Every year.  Boring

down, down we go—unless held up by new

practices—mindfulness accompanied

by delight and intentional desire.

What shall we desire this year but time

to slow down and notice we matter?

What can we want this season but good time

to walk among the seedlings on the rim?

Call it a great canyon and thank the earth
for more than one choice of finding a voice.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Morning Impressions

Source

I’m late for nothing.

I roll from bed stretching

into my skin and this grey day

that tricked me into sweet rest.

Such mornings are the privilege

of retirement.  They compensate

for aches in joints and unresponsive

nerve endings.  I take them too rarely—

This reaching into fingertips and toes,

smoothing wrinkles from elbows,

and neck and stomach as if I were

a pillow to plump into crisp casings

and not a collection of blood,

bone, bloated bowels and bile.

Today, fluffed into freshness,

I trace memories of you:

How we shared mornings,

cradling each other into caresses—

delight between night and daylight—

How the pillows remembered.

For Sumana's prompt Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Morning Poem

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Living a Prayer of Peace and Justice

My soapbox speeches call

for active prayer as part

of any radical revolution.

But everyone cannot

do everything alone—

so you go out, and I’ll pray, or I’ll go out and

you pray, or—better yet—

let’s both go out engaged

in prayer, as prayer, as an act of prayer.

I’ve heard that suicide

bombers have this practice—

at least Islamic ones die while praying—

while family and friends

pray elsewhere in great

trust and love for their sacrificial lambs.

Perhaps someone prays that

justice and God will in-

tervene and say No more blood, please, no more.

That’s part of my prayer,

it is, but the rest is

to live as powerfully as we could die.

I’ve had sound when oppressed

peoples can’t speak at all—

no more.  I pray to hear more voices now

especially those who

could or would not speak up

before.  Let's pray to care for each other.

Like suicide bombers,

I am willing to die—

but what I carry is just love and food,

water and ideas.

I bring my ears with me

and use them—learn to hear unfamiliar

voices and what’s between

the words.  We bring our hands,

pens, paper, word processors and cell phones.

This is a prayer, these words

strung here in rhythm, two

short lines and then one in pentameter.

It reads like prose.  It moves

like slow walking.  It asks

you to join in, to stir power like hot

coals ready to flame up

inflame the next person

and the next for a world without an end.

For my prompt Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Prayer

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast