The Aurora Borealis promenade the northern skies
The wisdom of your lifetime animates and implies
Coaxing your stellar erudition in your voice alone
Embracing with the emotional blessing of Shalom.
Compassionate communication are not just words to you
Bringing galaxies of practicality, a gift to others imbued
They are words that you exemplify in your actions kind
A serenity of spirit, a pastoral state of mind.
Category Archives: Poetry
These Are My People: Matthew McBee
My son and I line up at the counter
Draining blood from the coffee maker
Refilling our need for bonding
At our morning communion ritual
Not offered by a priest but by Folgers.
We settle at the dining table
Scrolling through my Facebook feed
For videos to spark heat into our spirits
Blaze them up with conversations
That can’t be repeated in public.
I don’t like the days when
It is just me standing in line
Waiting for the “good days”
Where the shame or guilt of bad decisions
Don’t hang like piñatas waiting
Waiting for us to strike the first blow
Raining the inner conflicts into our laps
Tarnished with expectations of perfection
Waiting for us to strike the first blow
Against one another with words
As bitter as the coffee we cream in avoidance
Of the redeeming absolution we could
But don’t usually offer to one another.
Pass it onward!
These Are My People: Linda Looney
Linda Looney’s birthday friend.
Each day that her phone rings
And every time she answers
A sliver of her mundane shows
In the music of her laughter.
There are so many fancy words
That could show you who she is
But they are shallow compared to her
Yet deeper than an abyss.
I could lift her up in glory
Extolling virtue and blessing
You’d believe me because I told you
But there’s so much you’d be missing.
Because my Mom is lovely,
She’s neither devil nor a saint
But she’s everything I long to be
And lots of things I ain’t.
I will tell you this much
A truth deeper than the sea
I love my perfectly human Mama
And I know that she loves me.
Happy birthday to my beloved mother. You’re Fezzes and bow ties to me.
Pass it onward!
These Are My People: Shonda
No More Violence
Tyrannical howls encapsulated
Intent on the destruction
Of their mutated version of devotion
personified by shattered glass while
screaming babies witness the impressionistic home
Painted in blood and bruises.
Kill me first! Kill me! Kill me first!
The begging screams for relief
from their suffering
But, fear motivates shelter
in uninhabitable relationships
with violence the language spoken
in vehement protest against their being
broken people with broken lives.
Pass it onward!
These Are My People: Avi Knight
There is a crescendo in my tacenda
Where I am normally, to him,
common time and a capella
My cadenza clumsily proceeds without cadence
Without rhythm or beats
My need for espressivo
longs for a nocturne
requires harmony
but instead is a series of operettas
that fall flat in parody
We’ve played off key for so long
That this piece became, not my canon,
But the silence of my sixteenth note,
A dirge with a pianissimo possibile refrain
of Rococo design.
Pass it onward!
These Are My People: Eva May
She wasn’t as broken as she thought
She was, instead, held together
With ropes, strings, duct tape, and
band-aids stained with false assumptions about herself.
Her worry laden back wilted her
Against her walking stick that was decorated
With badges of survival; proofs of journey.
The winds shifted into the sunshine’s warmth.
She lifted her fatigued eyes towards the light
Surprised that the path was always there
But had been lost in the weeds of history.
With a change of clothes, a bathing of her Spirit
A back brace of hope, personal strength flooding
She stepped onto the ancient path
The Universe sighed relief for the prodigals return.
Pass it onward!
Lost In The Night
I have walked through shadows
In the dark of darkest night
Searching for some calming peace
One hopeful shining light
The moon and stars have left me
Vanished from the skies
Hidden deep and dark within
Its murky cloud disguise
Blindly my footsteps falter
through brambles, swamp and fields
My frantic search continues
The night my vision shields
As if in answer to my cries
The night reveals her luminous guide
To light my way back to my haven
To let my fears subside
Now sitting by my warming hearth
Locked safe within its walls
I thank the guide for hearing me
Answering my calls
Home where there is family
Home where there is love
I raise my hands up to the skies
And thank the stars above
Mare Martell 