You were the hug when everyone was crying.
You called when the boys didn’t.
You paid for all the things
I never told you
I always wanted.
You pulled my shoulders back
and my spirit up
when I didn’t believe in myself.
You taught me how to bake cookies
and how to make a family.
You nourished me
so I could nourish him.
You will be the most beautiful woman
in the world.
Since the beginning
the mountains of your heart
echoed down
an unwavering note.
So I just have one thing to say:
I love you mom,
you gave me life.

© Leah Marie Waller

Published in Under the Cedar Tree, by Leah Marie Waller.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

For Carol

Forgive me if I tell you I am lost.

Even though you hollowed out the rock
and made a temple in my chest
my heart is still sometimes a slaughter barn
where dogs fight over ribbons of blood.

Though I have heard angels singing clear syllables
that can change a stone into a man
and bring him crying to his knees
I am lost.

So many times I have been saved by Grace
heard the ringing of invisible bells
that covered the laughter of demons and drove them away.
I have killed demons by the thousands with a sword
and baptized this world in their blood
but I don’t know for sure what my own name is.

Mother Mary smiles at me using the faces of grocery clerks.
The Mother and Father of the Universe tell me
I am their child.
But I am lost because I can’t remember every moment
in whose arms I am held.

Two times I felt a presence behind me
and turned to see a god seven feet tall
whose open face was a shotgun blast to the heart.
But twenty-three years later I come to your door
like a boy crying with a fish hook caught in his hand.
I need your help to go deeper.

I have seen Jesus Christ laughing inside an oval of light
the color of lavender.
I have seen Lord Krishna dancing inside a conch shell clear as ice
saw him float over the Gulf of Mexico
while seagulls mimicked his name
and mullet leapt out of waves to reach him
but I could not reach him.

Shree Maa told me, “I am you. I am nothing.”
Shivabalayogi said to me, “I am who you are.
You can never forget your own Self.”

But every moment I don’t remember I am in love with you
is like living in a bombed city.
There is an emptiness in rooms where you have lived and danced
then left them behind
that hurts like a pulled tooth.
I need your help to go deeper.

For a long time I was afraid to give myself to you
knowing I would be eaten alive.
Now the sound of my bones snapping between your teeth
is salvation.

I want to walk in the perennial garden
and gather into my wide face the light of the sky
coming down at sunset to kiss me on the mouth
and leave my lips red as a girl’s.
I want to give back light to you like the moon.

My beard is white.
My belly like a woman’s three months pregnant.
But in my heart I am a lover.
I am a bridegroom with a handful of flowers.
If the one I love is Shiva
then he can be the groom and I will be three months pregnant
with his child.

Take these flowers from my hand and put them in my hair.
I am talking to the God who lives in the body of Carol.
I am singing these words to my wife.

© Charlie Hopkins

Published at http://www.realization.org/page/doc0/doc0092.htm

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

A galactic silence
drifts over the world
during these, the Master’s last days.
Each moment a button coming undone,
the jewels of the mind
exposed to float endless in time.

So many decades, obedient, we reached
for the satin muscle of truth
stretched long by invisible hands.
How we wanted to be changed,
to be absorbed. Eyes closed,
we opened the door
to silent chasms of ice,
the mists of the moon.
Everything we touched
dissolved.

Today and forever his light burns in us,
soft as a fontanel, the place
where light collects under the skin.

© Susie Niedermeyer

Published in Under a Prairie Moon, by Susie Niedermeyer.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

The old tree by the old school
knows something—look at it
and you’ll see.

A city of leaves built high
above a single trunk, and the way
the sun comes to it, and the rain,

and roots—a cellar full
of monks making wine, while
in any weather wearing but

a simple bark-robe. But more
than this is the stillness, the poised
Grace, as if the best place

it could be is right where it is
and if ever it needs move…
a breeze comes.

© Bill Graeser

Published in Lyrical Iowa, 2006

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

from Grandma with Love

Barely five and worldly wise, flipping hair in beaded braids:
Jamaican beach surprise!

Coppertone cold upon her back
awakens chilly goose bump tickles.
Laughing, she giggles and skips away
flotations squeezed ‘round her tiny arms.
Swimsuit lines on skin so fair crisscross her golden tan,
the sweetest hue I’ve seen: smooth as see-through vellum.

Risky, her voyage, she trades her inner tube
for plastic water wings, puffed by Grandma-Wind-Bag:
“Trust your buoyant plastic bubbles, navigate the
waves of stormy days, bobble bravely on a sea of hope.
Dare enormous oceans, invite the taste of brackish breeze,
sink or swim ablaze for courage. Forget the bellybutton rule!
Confront caution boldly, face the random splashes,

sail to new horizons, follow stars to victory!”

Crazy-blue Jamaican bay, Reggae swaying purple Rumba:
Rhythms ebb the tides of moon, rolling beaches silver tumble,

broken shells on twinkle toes dance in time to sandy letters written,
washed to sea, yet burning still in memory.

Crimsoned coral fast asleep, cracked from ruddy beds,
lazy, rolling over, turns a beaded prize:
Strings of tuneful treasures, fingers counting mala ties,
spinning sacred chants ‘round faithful rosary,
invoking blessings for my love, blessing from the sea.

Maritime surprise! A finny dolphin fine salute!
Intoning benediction, he hails the joyous child and lifts her on his back.
High in garland circles splashing laurels in the air,

waving fare-thee-well to water wings, she calls,
“Look! Grandma, I’m swimming!”

© River Dog

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

On this pleasant brown afternoon, smudged
with February, by barns, I watch horses.
I watch the twelve dreaming girls astride them,
mud and snow, lapping up against each other. I watch
this strange kinship of opposites, girl and horse
stalled together in one closed motion.

The girls have grown more confident, though still shy,
as if they don’t yet know what all this means—
the thick furred thing that lifts and flows beneath them
with a name. Each girl, I think, longs to ride up into
the woods alone, and close a leafy door.
So no matter how much she talks to you about horses,
she can never say exactly what she means.

© Megge Hill Fitz-Randolph

First printed in Yellow Silk.
Published in Yellow Silk: Erotic Arts and Letters.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

On being asked for a poem of my own, when I offered to say one by someone else

But you know, I don’t write poetry
so many great poems in the world already

What I love is the sound of them, their taste in my mouth
crispness of consonants
fullness of vowels
to say them, sing them, dance them, sound them out
to people like you

to feel the silence
words sounding in silence
sculpted in silence—your silence

To teach people like you to taste them, sound them, dance them
until no one is left in the whole world to say
   I hate poetry—I never understand it
because everyone’s felt it singing inside them

That’s what I love
not writing my own
but for you I make an exception.

© Silvine Farnell

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

the song of the morning star
or the nectar of sage smelled
shook loose by rain like the finest comb
this turning one thing to another
day to night, summer to winter
such indelible sweetness, joyous greeting
the you of god always there, joining
joining all, connecting, transcribing
the one upon the other, endless
no stop, no gap, no matter what holds back
holds on, struggles and anguish aside
change and transcendence your magic sword
your constant blessing of there and not there
all this serving, this constancy of
the magnificent you in all, the sound
at the base of every concept
yes! this you come to meet, give back
that holy moment transfixed upon another
give back even self transcended, the holy
you becoming this one being also
the world singing its joy no concern
no focus, but there upon the simplest stillness
time’s crinkling and quaking cast loose
like the doppler fade of a long past truck
the whine almost gone into forever gone
while here You are, bright with greeting
this secret whisper, finally, after so long
resounding like a whole universe speaking

© 2009 Michael Hock

Dedicated to Sri Gary Olsen, current Living Master,
and founder of the MasterPath.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

Sometimes, when I think of the vast
wisdom ever contained in books—

countless scriptures of all creeds; scrolls in
indecipherable languages; tomes of science;

the great Library of Alexandria destroyed by
fire centuries ago, priceless knowledge gone;

thousands of books burned by the Third Reich;
books still held secret at the Vatican;

hieroglyphs in Egypt and whatever Atlantis
must have contributed to the written word;

books simply lost and never retrieved;
others molded, fallen apart, discarded,

and all the many books I’ll never be able to read in a
life-time even if I lived a thousand years;

and when I think of all these while browsing
at garage sales, used bookstores—(o, the good

feel of an old book and the sense of care for
books you surmise some previous owner had;

to see his or her name written on the title page,
sometimes with the date of purchase or gift)—

yes, then I tend to hold a book in my hands a little long
sometimes, deliberating whether I’ll buy,

and I read again what’s on the flap; scan a
few more pages; find a keen phrase here and there;

ponder on the title, the design, the author’s
name, weighing it all in my hand . . . And

page after page of long-forgotten lore, myth, and
adventure slowly take shape and mingle with

my own memory of myth in the back of
my mind, passing through my skin, stealing

into my bones, my heart, holding me spellbound
for a life-time it seems, and somehow beneath

my feet the deeper caves and mysteries of the earth
open wide where I glimpse that which

I cannot name but know that it exists;
and I’m feeling so strangely rooted and connected

to all cultures, beliefs, poetry, romance, peace,
wars, and history . . . and I may take the book home,

maybe not—it doesn’t matter, for as I’m
standing here, simply lost in time for a while,

some power is reclaiming everything I thought
was lost to man one time, and I see the

Great Communicator of it all in all these
many chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words

working their way with a purpose, meaning,
and conviction across so many ages,

and suddenly it seems that everything is all here now,
and really never was gone at all, as long as

books have ever existed, and readers found them,
and as I close the book, walking out to get some fresh air,

there’s all the magic in the air as of old still, and
I can live with that, and be an open book to all.

© Freddy Niagara Fonseca

The poem has been on permanent display at Revelations Cafe & Bookstore, Fairfield, Iowa since December 2004.

It’s available as a broadside. 14 x 35.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010.

Published in The Neovictorian/Cochlea, 2006, and winningwriters.com, 2006.

six o clock
snuck up on me
like a cat
stretching
slowly
to a slink

this cats gotta prowl
sniffing out
the motion
of you or perhaps just another
cat
scratch that urge
it’s all the same

six fifteen
the artificial glow
of night melts
my shadow on concrete
me
strutting
tail tall

© Ann Du Bois

Published in Lyrical Iowa.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010.