Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Poem for Maya Angelou's birthday and National Poetry Month

Today would have been the 90th birthday of Maya Angelou, the great feminist poet, essayist, memoirist, and activist. As part of my series of poems posted for #NationalPoetryMonth, I thought I'd post one for her. 

This poem was not necessarily inspired by Angelou and her work, though it very well could have been. It shares many qualities with her work, an optimism, a desire to celebrate women, a belief in the triumph of the human spirit. It was, however, created during the immediate aftermath of having to leave, for medical reasons, a longtime career of running a university women's center and working extremely hard to help women empower themselves.

One day during this period of adjustment and grieving, as I wrote in my journal about what I missed most about my work, I reminisced about the extraordinary moments when women I had worked with would finally step up and seize their own power and take charge of their lives and their dreams. This poem came out of those memories.



SHE TAKES HER POWER IN HER OWN HANDS

and pours it over her body,
drenching hair and face,
standing in pools of herself,
dripping excess. She takes up her power
with strong hands and holds it close
to her breasts like an infant, warming it
with her own heat. She draws her power
around her like a hand-loomed shawl,
a cloak to keep the wind out,
pulling it tighter, tugging and patting it
smooth against the winter.
She pulls her power from branches
of dead trees where it has hung so long
neglected that it has changed from white to deep
weathered gold. She wraps her hair
in power like the light of distant stars,
gleaming through the dark emptiness
in and around everything. She lets her power down
into a dank well, down and down,
clanking against stone walls, until
she hears the splash, a little further
to submerge it completely, then draws it
hand over rubbed-raw hand, heavy enough
to make her shoulders and forearms ache
and shudder with strain, pulls it up
overflowing, her power,
and drinks in deep, desperate gulps
out of a lifetime of thirst. She weaves her power
into a web, a cloth, a shroud, and hangs it
across the night where it catches the light of stars
and refracts it into a shining glory,
brighter than the moon
and colder. She holds her power
in her hands at the top of the hill
in the top of the tree where she steps out
onto the air and her wings
of power buoy her to ride the thermals
higher and higher toward the sun,
her new friend.
When she returns,
she folds her power over and over
into a tiny, dense pellet to swallow,
feeling its mass sink to her center
and explode, spreading throughout to transform
her into something elemental,
a star,
a mountain,
a river,
a god.


Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

Sunday, April 1, 2018

National Poetry Month Begins on Easter, Passover, and April Fool's Day

April is National Poetry Month, and as usual during this month, I will be posting poems to this blog throughout the month. In 2018, however, the beginning of National Poetry Month is also April Fool's Day, Passover, and Easter, a powerful concoction of influences.

This first poem for National Poetry Month, then, is one that plays with the history of Christianity, Judaism, and the basic concept of the Holy Fool or the fool for God.




LAMENT OF A FAILED ACOLYTE

Desperation can come from having nothing but God to love.
                                         --Michael Heffernan

Desperation I’ve a long acquaintance with.
Desperation and hope
have been the twin pillars
between which I’ve sailed,
trying to avoid being eaten alive
or sucked in,
aiming at the narrow gate
sometimes called Jesus
who’s run me aground on hope.
Unlike despair, hope’s not a sin
against the Holy Spirit but only
against logic and forty years’ experience
wandering in this hungry desert,
waiting for white wafers of grace
to descend and bring another presence.
If I sound mad, it’s no wonder,
in this shaggy, lice-ridden skin
with blood of locusts on my tongue.
My big mistake was asking
I AM
in for company.
Avoid divine guests, I say
now, drowning in painful, terrifying love.
There’s been a mix-up somewhere.
I put in a request for ecstasy,
not passion.


Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)