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Holding others despair while living my life :

I want to share in the magnitude of this global pain 

Particularly you Gaza

Despair for what you endure daily 

I stand with you in solidarity 

Letting you know through nameless energy 

That this what you face is wrong and evil 

As anything ever was, or is

And there’s been a lot of wrong and evil 

Perpetuated by us, this human race 

And yet not withstanding the horrors 

In my day to day life 

I am blown open to the sacredness of presence 

The many tasks of living ground me

The moments of deep connection 

The way nature splays, and splashes 

Unchecked 

Her abundance of light, color and life

I don’t know how to stand 

In the fullness of my life 

With it’s pain and plenty 

Without belying the agony of yours 

I don’t know how to uphold both

This upended world 

Along side nothing changing 

Just now in my daily life

—Jean Lopez

Fall

Within the thunder of the waterfall, I am the rocks within.

Victoria Falls, Seongo or Chongwe, “The Place of the Rainbow.”

Pummeled by liquid, pounded by gravity, 

I depend on rain, on the breeze, on the rush of a red-necked falcon’s wings.

Prisms of mist lift from great sheets of water jumping over the edge

5,600 feet down, look up to the decades rushing into the present.

Funny how something so soft dropped high enough, fast enough

batters a rock and like a paper bark tree I grow smooth and I bend.

I am pliant, like clay.

I learn everyday.

—Emily Romano

Bad

 

— Kim Mosley