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Poetry
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from the words of my groaning? Psalm 22:1-2 O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Habakkuk 1:2 Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Psalm 90:13-14 Homicide Survivors I have to become a survivor and I can do it. The hardest part of my loss I have been through it. Having to face this world again, I will learn to pretend Until my broken heart has time to mend. The grief and pain I'm feeling is my own But it's easier knowing that I'm not alone. Sadness, heartache, loneliness and pain Tragic death is hardest on those who remain. I have to become a survivor now and I can do it. I'll ask God and He will help me get through it. -- Sharon McClain-Boyer Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must love things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense any more, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with your everywhere like a shadow or a friend. -- Naomi Shihab Nye I Will Try I will try. I will step from the house to see what I see and hear and I will praise it. I did not come into this world to be comforted. I came, like the red bird, to sing. But I'm not a red bird, with his head-mop of flame and the red triangle of this mouth full to tongue and whistles, but a woman whose love has vanished, who thinks now, too much, of roots and the dark places where everything is simply holding on. But this too, I believe, is a place where God is keeping watch until we rise, and step forth again and - but wait. Be still. Listen! Is it red bird? Or something inside myself, singing? -- Mary Oliver Everything Is Plundered Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold, Death's black wing scrapes the air, Misery gnaws to the bone. Why then do we not despair? By day, from the surrounding woods, cherries blow summer into town, at night the deep transparent skies glitter with new galaxies. And the miraculous comes so close to the ruined dirty houses -- something not known to anyone at all, but wild in our breast for centuries. -- Anna Akhmatova Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. -- Psalm 69:1-3 Friendship Oh, the comfort -- the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, Having neither to weigh thoughts, Nor measure words -- but pouring them all right out -- just as they are -- Chaff and grain together -- Certain that a faithful hand will Take and sift them-- Keep what is worth keeping-- And with the breath of kindness Blow the rest away. -- Dinah Maria Mulock Craik To My Sweet Crushed Angel (an original poem about resilience -- the ability to restore oneself after compressive stress -- written for victims of crime) How does it feel to be a Heart? O my sweet crushed angel, you are not at fault for falling out of the glittering sky. Life is dangerous, full of pain. You lie tangled in a heap of rage, Beat. Quiver shame, still radiant. It is all part of being a Heart. Unlike other small, brittle creatures you can be loved back into flight. In time. the mind unsnarls from fright, mournful cries deciphered kindly. Wings regrow. O my sweet crushed angel, there will be a scar - but that's not all you are -- every atom was once a star. This shining trumps the choir of dark. Let the quiet shimmer, lift you celestial, where every damaged bit only facets the unbreakable incandescent part of Heart. Living from here is an art. See what happens if you willingly unfurl your gossamer into a new shape, start: Recovery. --Mary Mulvihill O Lord, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help, like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a thing of horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape; my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry out to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me? Wretched and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am desperate. Your wrath has swept over me; your dread assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long; from all sides they close in on me. You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness. -- Psalm 88 The Mother Writes to the Murderer: A Letter "Alicia didn't like sadness." The Dallas Morning News To you whose brain is a blunt fist pushed deep inside your skull whose eyes are empty bullets whose mouth is a stone more speechless than lost stones at the bottoms of rivers who lives in a shrunken world where nothing blooms and no promise is ever kept To you whose face I never saw but now see everywhere the rest of my life You don't know where she hid her buttons arranged in families by color or size tissue-wrapped in an oatmeal box how she told them goodnight sleep well and never felt ashamed You don't know her favorite word and I won't tell you You don't have her drawings taped to your refrigerator blue circuses, red farms You don't know she cried once in a field of cows saying they were too beautiful to eat I'm sure you never thought of that I'm sure nothing is too beautiful for you to eat You have no idea what our last words were to one another how terribly casual because I thought she was going a block away with her brother to the store They would be back in ten minutes I was ironing her dress while two houses away an impossible darkness rose up around my little girl What can I wish you in return? I was thinking knives and pistols high voltages searing off your nerves I was wishing you could lose your own life bit by bit finger by toe and know what my house is like how many doors I still will have to open Maybe worse would be for you to love something and have it snatched up sifted out of your sight for what reason? a flurry of angels recalled to heaven and then see how you sit and move and remember how you sleep at night how you feel about mail my letter to you all the letters passing through all the hands of the people on earth when the only one that matters is the one you can neither receive nor send -- Naomi Shihab Nye Last Night Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt--marvelous error!-- that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct,, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk? Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt--marvelous error!-- that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt--marvelous error!-- that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart. It was fiery because I felt warmth as from a hearth. And sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes. Last night, as I slept, I dreamt--marvelous error!-- that it was God I had here inside my heart. -- Antonio Machado Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones. But Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me." Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. -- Isaiah 49:13-16 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. -- Matthew 5:4 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. -- John 11:32-35 A Psalm of Lament Creator God, whose thought formed the universe and every star in heaven, Creator God, whose hand has caressed into being what our minds have failed to comprehend, Why does my spirit remain strong but my body dissolves like the hills under the lash of wind and rain? Why does my heart beat with the strength of my youth but I am betrayed by life seeping from my arms? All life comes from you, it is a gift of exquisite value. Think on me, LORD, think on me. Let my life have purpose even when my body fails. Let my life have value even when I am twisted and frozen in time. My heart will sing your praise. The voice in my mind will joyfully speak your name. For the life in my heart will always know your salvation. For the life in my heart is the work of your hand. O my Creator. Rev. Richard Reed, Senior Pastor St. Andrew United Methodist Church Arlington, Texas |
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