July 2010, Featured Articles, Poetry
Hope Springs in a Time of Hunger and Uprootedness
It's past 2am
Again
And heaven shines
Its bright white light
Again
Into the darkened corners of my mind
In intervals
Like a great warm sentry
Doing his rounds
He laughs at me kindly
When he sees me
And pokes me in the ribs
While telling me 'everything's just fine
Don't worry'
Like the stretching of the evenings
The hour jumped forward
Or the puff of a cloud
Over the blue green valley
Oh how lucky we feel
Him and I
And all whose hearts are open
To breathe this air
And watch these tides
To have been born here
To have been alive
And how lucky we'll be
To die here
In the soft warm soil
Of our mothers
With our only fear
'Does it all just end here
Like this
In the cool and dark
Of nothingness
No hell?'
Yes, the heaven I see
And feel
Has no need to make ill
Or judgement
And though it loves
It is no father
Or mother
It is no brother or sister
Or cousin or friend
But is both and all and everything
It is the bringer of sex and seed
The breaker of smiles and waves
It is the lifter of spirits
Beaten down
The falling of water
And whisper of leaves
It is the song of the blackbird
On the branch
It is the sun
The moon
The rain and stars
It is a mountain
And a cold lake
It is a hungry fox
A rabbit and a squirrel
It is a heron waiting on the river bank
A seagull screeching, swooping down,
It is the river itself
And the sea
It is a shrew
And makes of itself a burrow
And a hill
It is all stone
All cats
And every mule
It is the panting of a dog
And a city
It is what's lost for words
When we get too excited
By love or by the morning
It's what passes between us
When we forget ourselves
And remember such creation
It is the pump in our hearts
That fills us forever
With the colours that we dream
In their spinning wheel
Of forward moving venture
It is a beginning,
An end,
A move toward invention
And,
When our fears
Do finally come asunder,
It's what sets us all free
At the dawning of the summer
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