Response to Birdsong, from the Terezin Concentration Camp
If the tears obscure your way,
try to open up your heart to beauty.
Weave a wreath of memories.
The blind man listening in the woods
sees as much as the sighted man,
knows what the birds know
and where (in the world) he stands.
He cannot see the yellow wood sorrel
but he can sense the timbre and tremolo
and knows things about the birds
you haven’t dared to learn.
The birds he hears are free
but we make prisoners of humans.
Children kept in cages.
Here or there, what does it matter?
Separated from their parents.
Then or now, what does it matter?
Across the centuries
the birds observe
the anguish and the misery
and still, the birds sing.
Oblivious to their song, in childhood
I wove a crown of vines in dappled shade
and wore it like a badge o’er my brain
in shadows like the camouflage my cousin wore
when he was shot at
when his innocence was slaughtered
along with his friends.
In my grandfather’s time,
he lied for the privilege to go to war.
In my father’s time,
he had to be drafted.
In my cousin’s time,
the military was his last good option.
In my children’s time,
can war cease?
In their children’s time,
which birds will remain
to sing?
— Erin Taylor
Untitled
bird sings in the trees
leaves sway in the high branches
the world sleeps in peace
—Paul Causey
In Secret
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret.” — Pablo Neruda Sonnet XVII
One night I put God away,
packed Him—Her, perhaps it was—
away like an old toy, a childhood journal.
Not the right path I said, and it was true—is true
that God is too small, a cutout painted,
the edges jagged from scissors that tore the cardboard.
But I packed something else away that night
a love, some slant of light on the sparrow at the bench,
from a face on the street.
Not gone entirely, some scrap
of song, a darkness on the wind
coming round about, not at the front door
but a leak through the sash of the window
no longer nameable.
Maybe this had to be—
to stop pinning and naming, being good,
to stop doing the work
and let the work lead on its secret way.
But, oh, I have lost—the honey
green of leaves in childhood,
a light like milk falling from a basement window.
Throw it on the fire my teacher said.
If it’s true, it will not burn.
And I, childlike, threw it in—
God and all the sacraments, the voice
that whispered to me, the desire
for light and sweetness falling from the air.
And so a long, slow burning
a prayer like a coal in the mind.
So many years, all the world burning
and I do not know where I stand
in a land sacred despite me.
Me still wanting to love—but what?
a glow in the night sky?
Me still wanting to throw it all on the fire—
myself, God, Zen, the boxes and doors and names,
still wanting to stand in the rain and be nothing but rain
still hearing a sound chink chink
bird call, whistle tone
voice asking, do you love me?
and my child voice answering, Yes.
Yes, I love you.
If you tell me to, I will do it again.
—Sarah Webb
Oops!
I know I shouldn’t make fun of god,
but I think he goofs every now and then.
So, what must it be like to be all knowing,
omnipotent and everything to everyone?
Pretty heady stuff I would imagine.
But what happens when that entity, that person, or god,
is carrying a tray full of paint of every color imaginable,
and steps over a mountain range,
catching their toe on the topmost peak.
Can you see it?
God cartwheeling across China,
paint flying across three provinces,
the music, can you paint with all the colors of the wind,
playing in the background?
When the paint clears, is it a catastrophe?
Like the time I spilled my cereal all over my mother’s new rug.
Or is it simply another masterpiece,
like so many god has done before,
like the flowers covering the low valleys in springtime,
or the black and white paintings he does in winter
of snow-covered peaks in moonlight.
I suppose, these mountains in China
are just another example of god’s artistic
method of letting things fall where they may.
I’m beginning to wonder if anything is ever planned,
any thought given to design in advance.
No wonder evolution is such a popular theory of creation.
After trying for seven days to get his technique down right,
he just quit and let things run their own course.
Now look what we have.
Unadulterated beauty everywhere.
It’s enough to throw your hands up in the air
and just sit, crossed legged,
take it all in and call it a day.
Maybe that’s it. Those mountains,
full of color, unnatural color at that,
happened on the first day,
followed by everything else afterward.
No, those mountains in China were a slip,
a muscle spasm upending the paint tray of life,
what a spasm it was.
—Paul Causey
Inspired by the visual prompt: Rainbow Mountains of China’s Zhangye Danxia National Geologic
See Me (Lessons From A Blind Kindergartener) For: S.G.
They tell me of these colors bold,
Of wondrous sights to see.
What means so much to you,
Means so very little to me.
I reach out front,
Beyond me.
Teach me about what I can feel!
The seen path you take for granted,
Neglects the navigation of this hill.
The object dropped,
Reverberates,
Loud upon the floor.
The sound so piercing to my ears,
With ease you can ignore.
As I walk through the darkness,
I have you along my side.
When you close your eyes with empathy,
You become a better guide.
—Jess Godwin
Inspired by the visual prompt: Rainbow Mountains of China’s Zhangye Danxia National Geologic
Eclipse
Twenty-five years ago I fell into a deep well,
landed on the eiderdown,
bounced up and landed
on the ground and bounced again.
I floated into love,
covered in a coat of golden feathers,
scented with you, like the green grass that bursts from the earth
after the spring rain.
As time and love passed away,
most feathers molted and fell like ash.
I still hoist your colors, I still carry banners in your memory,
Though your sweat and sound have faded,
the snow still melts,
the crawfish scuttle from the rocks.
The blades of green return.
Each year they hold me in a love
where once I held you.
This is the love I walk in.
This is a love I move in,
a love that touches currents, a sound to tightrope.
This is a love that cracks the crust of earths,
that dwarfs the galaxies, and swallows
the universe, whole.
This is a gravity I cannot escape,
nor would I wish to,
for though the scent, the sound, the feel of your breath is gone,
I still walk in the cool night air we ran together through, in childish delight.
I know now, once, I was loved,
when so many are not,
and that is enough.
—Emily Romano
Inhale/Exhale
I thought I saw something out beyond the barn,
a light perhaps, a reflection off
the window of the house.
Strange little baubles,
blurred like streetlamps in the rain
in a watercolor painting.
Breath, inhale, exhale.
It’s nothing to be afraid of.
But the little girl, holding a basket
of corn beneath a starry sky,
that is something to wonder about.
Is she a figment of my imagination,
a symptom of the hunger I feel,
a sign of the need of the world and its fulfillment,
or simply that of hope and what will
happen in the days, weeks, months to come.
I fear she is an illusion.
I fear that the people need more than
what she can give.
I hope I am wrong.
Breath, inhale, exhale.
I hope that her nemesis, the spirit
of hunger for all things living is more
the illusion than the little girl.
Hunger will devour us all one way or another.
Hunger is not necessarily searching for food
for the body, but food for the soul.
The spirit of hunger is insatiable,
Corn will not satiate its cravings,
but power, fed by the energy of souls
will only increase its cravings.
More people, more souls, more power,
more, more, more is not enough.
Breath, inhale, exhale.
It is the only thing that is real.
Breath, inhale, exhale.
Be alive. Just breath.
Just be.
—Paul Causey
Girl With Corn
In the old way, there was corn,
a food from the stars,
and wheat and rice and taro.
We worked together to plant and gather.
We added our life to the life given us.
Family is given and grown
in just this way.
Song, as we open to it.
Fire.
A girl stands in the night.
Stars open the black behind her.
Her dress is the color of coals.
Corn shines in her basket.
The green of its growing wraps it.
A bird has come to bless the offering.
The girl's hands hold the basket with care.
They hold the plenty.
—Sarah Webb
Rain on Tin
It’s raining here tonight,
the heavens breaking their weeklong fast
with the earth,
their drops landing softly upon my tin roof.
I can hear each drop as it lands,
like pins dropping into a glass bowl
and later, like the sound of bacon
frying in a hot pan.
At some point, their identities blend into one,
like a drum roll over my head,
but if I listen carefully,
I can hear each individual drop
as it hits the roof.
And then, all is quiet
except for the drops hesitating
before they fall from the branches
of the tree outside my window,
shaken loose by the wind
with a sigh and a resigned letting go,
a lingering memory
of the soft rain dancing on tin.
In the morning, the sky will be clear
and I will be able to see for miles.
—Paul Causey
Mezzo Soprano
Dedicated to Tyre Nichols and Veronica Williams
They say there’s video.
I don’t want to see.
I hate these movies where another black brother dies.
I consider the man and the woman who made him.
I curse the men that unmade him.
I curse the silence of I and
America, America.
How we till our rich killing power.
How we stamp our silky dew rags, our many strands of black curls
beneath the steeled toed boot, beneath the iron hearts of power.
They say there’s video.
It’s enough to tear a real heart apart and lay it dying on the lawn.
So much blood runs out
on these streets of America, caught
in the hands, in the aprons of mother,
the sister,
in the name of the father.
There’s too much blood that’s watered this soil.
We think it goes nowhere.
But its slaked the root’s thirsts and made our ghosts stronger.
They say there’s a video.
I don’t want to see.
On flickering screens, he was too much to be.
Time could stop.
Breath could cease.
I would understand
if this mezzo soprano before me
never sang another note
and hung her shrouded soul in dark.
But there’s a bird rattling in her lungs.
It has to get free.
The louder the strings sing all around her,
the harder the wings beat to flee.
Despite all this darkness, despite all this murder,
she lifts her heart’s corners,
smiles to the stage lights,
and the bird flutters free
on the old familiar strings:
We shall overcome,
Someday,
and she makes me believe.
— Emily Romano
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