In our short time together here, I’ve shared poems that dip into a pretty wide ocean of topics, themes, and feelings. The poems that have felt the hardest to share are the ones that dive into the darker corners of my own experience. I find my people-pleasing self not wanting to be a “downer.” Given the choice, I’d rather lift people up than throw a wet blanket over a day that might have already felt soggy. But I also want everyone sharing here to feel free to share all the parts of themselves and their experiences—not just the sunny ones. That’s the magic of the community that’s sprung up in the comments thread. Your poems and comments have made me laugh and made me cry, and both of those experiences feel sacred.
My poem today isn’t funny, and it isn’t sunny. It’s about the genocide occurring in Gaza. It’s also about love—because grief is about love, and the horror I feel over what is happening to Palestinians is about love.
For context, this poem was inspired by a video I watched a few days ago (I think it was from Al Jazeera, but unfortunately I can’t find it now), in which a Gazan medical worker discovers that his young son is among the freshly wounded at the hospital where he is working, and the two are reunited.
Questions Shaped Like Names
Thick gauze wraps around his tiny head, white halo on black hair. “Baba!” he cries and is lifted into the warm sky of a father’s arms. “My love, my boy,” the man cries, and he is really crying. I would, too— working all night there in the hospital then finding my own child among the wounded. “Did they bomb the house?” he asks. The angel bobs his head, and his father wails like a siren. He was staunching bleeding and stitching wounds. Now all he can do is shape names into questions. “Where is Mama?” “Where is Motaz?” The bandaged boy points to the heavens, and the sky is crumbling. Baba weeps the words again and again— “Mama, where’s Mama?” I can hear his sobs from six thousand miles away. How long does it take for air to travel the globe? How long until we are all breathing Rafah? I walk the fields and beseech the ground— what do I need to let go of so that I can hold all of this? Three does leap from the brush, their tails waving white flags. I am startled by delight, am startled, again, to find that such a feeling is possible under this sky, against this ground. I surrender any pretense to understanding. I tip from grief to joy and back again. I am laughing. I am crying. Maybe this tipping is the way to hold it all, weights counterbalanced on the sides of my body. A way to stay upright instead of hunching into half my humanity. My dog bounds ahead then halts abruptly, thorns tangled against his leg. I prick my finger to set him free. If I prick nine more, will it see you free? How many hands do you need and how much holding? How many voices raised to the pitch of sirens until finally the only thing dropping over Gaza is a white flag, an olive branch, sackcloth against the ashes of all that’s burned?
The Prompt
If you like your prompts short and punchy, then today’s word is holding. If you prefer a prompt that’s more expansive, then here are some questions to sit with. What too-heavy-to-carry thing are you trying to hold? How do you a hold a thing—any thing? Where do you put the grief or the rage? How do you channel it? How do you use it for good—or wish you were using it for good? How do you forgive yourself for sometimes bending your grief or rage in other directions, too? Where and when do you find delight? Are you able to hold delight—to be fully in delight—without guilt or withholding? If not, what might allow you to do so? Where is love in all of this? When do you feel most connected to your humanity? To your place within the web of all life?
Thank you for the beautiful space you hold for my poems and for the gorgeous and heartfelt poems that pop up in the comments threads. Whatever it is you are holding right now, I wish you some unexpected shimmer of delight today.
An ode to holding? Not sure what this was that came out...
I hold
in.
I hold
out.
I hold up,
down,
back,
forth,
against,
on.
I hold my breath.
And, at last,
I hold still, and for a moment,
I hold no hopes,
I hold no grudges.
I I hold steady and fast.
I hold space for
the wholly holy mess of it all.
Present.
Future.
Past.
No holds barred.
A very long day for me at work, an even longer day for those in Kansas City, in Parkland, on our southern border in Gaza, in Rafah, in Ukraine. It is a a day that starts this Christian season of Lent, often referred to as Ash Wednesday. This poem came from those ashes.
Ashes
Setting up for evening service this Ash Wednesday,
this Valentines day where Love should be the center,
Donna came in,
tears in her eyes.
“There’s been another shooting,” she said.
As my mind went distant,
my own eyes again filling
with the floodwaters of tears,
rushing down the mountains of pain and anger,
hatred and violence,
flowing
straight into my broken heart.
Another crack in the wall,
a fracture in the joy that lived there,
moments before.
I wondered how many feckless leaders will offer
“thoughts and prayers” this evening.
49 shootings in 45 days, the cycle of violence
amplified by drooling demagogues,
and invertebrate minions
sharing hate and branding it love.
How many “thoughts and prayers” will it take
for the senseless violence to cease,
for the madness to recede,
for the losses we incur to be worth more,
than the dollars that flow
through the economics of
fear, rage, cynicism and profits of pain.
Looking down at the dark streaks
from the ashes we use as symbols,
I ponder how many have died today,
in Gaza, in Rafah, in Ukraine,
in Kansas City…
I wonder of the ashes we create
from our wars, our killings, our addiction to guns;
The weapons we manufacture more quickly
than the food we could be cultivating to
feed a starving world.
Or the love we should be nurturing
for this this deadly broken world
yearning to be healed.
Out of these ashes may we rise,
shine out into the shadows
of these thoughts and prayers
and cry out, “no more.”
No more…No. More.
Wiping these tears from my eyes,
one more time,
I head out into a frigid winter evening,
praying we find home by another way.