By James Jarrett
Hope has withered
And faded
Like cut flowers
No root
No branch
Life still held
But fleeting
Slowly fading
Nourished in vain
To try and keep going
For a few more days
Prayers and Meditations
You Did it to Me
“For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me; sick and you visited me; in prison and you came to see me. . . . I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.” -Matthew 25:35-40 (Christian scripture)
Home
By Aisha Patterson
Home is the place your heart resides
Home is the place that you decide
Home is the womb that holds the soul
Home is the place where one is whole
Home is the glow you hold in your eye
Home is the emotion that makes you cry
Home is safe and a place of peace
Home is where all strivings cease
Home is a memory that follows your being
Home is a dream for those agreeing
Home is the place where reserves fall
Home is the place you yearn to call
Home is where the family meets
Home is a place of restful retreats
Home is the place you know you’ll be heard
Home is the place where nothing blurs
Home is all these wonderful things
Home is the place you develop wings
Home is the place that you’ll find one day
Home is the place where your heart will stay
The Invitation
By Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool for love,
for your dream,
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon.
I want to know
if you have touched
the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become
shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own,
without moving to hide it,
or fade it,
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy,
mine or your own;
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful,
to be realistic,
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true. I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure,
yours and mine,
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
‘Yes.’
It doesn’t interest
me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer is a Canadian writer and mystic. This prose poem offers an invitation to every single one of us to “show up” in the universe.
That is Me
By Guy Farmer
Blissfully easy,
Categorizing a
Human being as
Defective, lazy,
Unworthy of care,
Compassion.
Cruel exercise,
Rendering a person
Featureless,
Expendable,
Trash decomposing
In a gutter.
Crucial shift
From apathy, scorn
To compassion,
Understanding,
That is me
But for chance.
Incarnation
By Sr. Simone Campbell
Let gratitude be the beat of our heart,
pounding Baghdad rhythms, circulating
memories, meaning of the journey.
Let resolve flow in our veins,
fueled by Basra’s destitution, risking
reflective action in a fifteen-second world.
Let compassion be our hands,
reaching to be with each other, all others
to touch, hold heal this fractured world.
Let wisdom be our feet,
bringing us to the crying need
to friends or foe to share this body’s blood.
Let love be our eyes,
that we might see the beauty, see the dream
lurking in the shadows of despair and dread.
Let community be our body warmth,
radiating Arab energy to welcome in the foreign
stranger—even the ones who wage this war.
Let us remember on drear distant days,
we are a promised Christmas joy
we live as one this tragic gifted life—
We are the Body of God!
Sr. Simone Campbell, SSS is a Catholic sister, lawyer, and lobbyist known as an outspoken advocate for social justice. This poem was written after she visited Iraq soon before the U.S. invasion.
Give Me
By Pablo Neruda
Give me, for my life,
All lives,
Give me all the pain
Of everyone,
I’m going to turn it into hope.
Give me
All the joys,
Even the most secret,
Because otherwise
How will these things be known?
I have to tell them,
Give me
The labors
Of everyday,
For that’s what I sing
Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician.
Awaken
Originally in Quechua
Wake up! Children of the Incas, shout!
Turn your eyes this way with your head held high;
so we can be heard around the world.
The new day is beginning, The sun greets you, as a mother looking upon her children gathered below him.
Her sparkling light shines upon you as it had in the good times of our glorious Kingdom of Tawantinsuyu.
Upon you workers who have suffered too long!
Here it is! Our victorious day has arrived.
Obtained by the blood of our brave fighters,
who sacrificed their lives and were hung by their necks,
because they fought their exploiters in the past.
It is necessary to bring back the consciousness of our ancestors.
People Equal
By James Berry
Some people shoot up tall.
Some hardly leave the ground at all.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
One voice is a sweet mango.
Another is a nonsugar tomato.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
Some people rush to the front.
Others hang back, feeling they can’t.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
Hammer some people, you meet a wall.
Blow hard on others, they fall.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
One person will aim at a star.
For another, a hilltop is too far.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
Some people get on with their show.
Others never get on the go.
Yet-People equal. Equal.
James Berry was a Jamaican author of several books of poetry and children’s literature.
Still I Rise
By Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist.