Two poems about miracles
Jun. 16th, 2022 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormNo Small Thing
The smell of baking bread, smooth floured hands,
butter waiting to be spread with blackberry jam
and I realize, this is no small thing.
These days spent confined,
I am drawn to life's ordinary details,
the largeness of all we can do
alongside what we cannot.
The list of allowances far outweighs my complaints.
I am fortunate to have flour and yeast, a source of heat
not to mention soft butter, the tartness of blackberries
harvested on a cold back road.
A kitchen, a home, two working
hands to stir and knead,
a clear enough head to gather it all.
Even the big toothy knife feels miraculous
as it grabs hold and cracks the crust.
Ellen Rowland
Acts of helplessness
Here are the miracle-signs you want: that
you cry through the night and get up at dawn, asking,
that in the absence of what you ask for your day gets dark,
your neck thin as a spindle, that what you give away
is all you won, that you sacrifice belongings,
sleep, health, your head, that you often
sit down in a fire like aloes wood, and often go out
to meet a blade like a battered helmet.
When acts of helplessness become habitual,
those are the signs.
But you run back and forth listening for unusual events,
peering into faces of travelers.
“Why are you looking at me like a madman?”
I have lost a friend. Please forgive me.
Searching like that does not fail.
There will come a rider who holds you close.
You faint and gibber. The uninitiated say, “He’s faking.”
How could they know?
Water washes over a beached fish, the water
of those signs I just mentioned.
Excuse my wandering.
How can one be orderly with this?
It’s like counting leaves in the garden,
along with the song-notes of partridges,
and crows.
Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.
Rumi, unknown translation
The smell of baking bread, smooth floured hands,
butter waiting to be spread with blackberry jam
and I realize, this is no small thing.
These days spent confined,
I am drawn to life's ordinary details,
the largeness of all we can do
alongside what we cannot.
The list of allowances far outweighs my complaints.
I am fortunate to have flour and yeast, a source of heat
not to mention soft butter, the tartness of blackberries
harvested on a cold back road.
A kitchen, a home, two working
hands to stir and knead,
a clear enough head to gather it all.
Even the big toothy knife feels miraculous
as it grabs hold and cracks the crust.
Ellen Rowland
Acts of helplessness
Here are the miracle-signs you want: that
you cry through the night and get up at dawn, asking,
that in the absence of what you ask for your day gets dark,
your neck thin as a spindle, that what you give away
is all you won, that you sacrifice belongings,
sleep, health, your head, that you often
sit down in a fire like aloes wood, and often go out
to meet a blade like a battered helmet.
When acts of helplessness become habitual,
those are the signs.
But you run back and forth listening for unusual events,
peering into faces of travelers.
“Why are you looking at me like a madman?”
I have lost a friend. Please forgive me.
Searching like that does not fail.
There will come a rider who holds you close.
You faint and gibber. The uninitiated say, “He’s faking.”
How could they know?
Water washes over a beached fish, the water
of those signs I just mentioned.
Excuse my wandering.
How can one be orderly with this?
It’s like counting leaves in the garden,
along with the song-notes of partridges,
and crows.
Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.
Rumi, unknown translation
