Marge Piercy - Sometimes While I'm Chanting

Ray Skjelbred - The Stick in the  Water

In his rock, God broods.
It's got to be hard
being the one forever guy
and cramped too
like a chick in a granite eggshell.
I bet he'd love to finger
all those runes scratched outside,
or slip the word out
to the nervously wise.

I've never heard from him,
despite years bored in Christian pews
(and cold mornings in synagogues
hushing babel among Jews.)
Minarets also roared
prayer was better than sleep.
What I picked up instead
was bitter yawning at the chore.
Maybe it's like solitary,
cooped up the way he is.
At every side, he has to tap,
and there's never a wall that talks back.

The birds slept-in this morning
Not a word out of them
'til sun-up
Usually they're out there
just before light
tuning up
chirming away to themselves
about the nature of light
for which they're always yearning
or about the earth
and why it never stops
turning--
Big questions
for birds to settle
and tell us
in single syllables
before breakfast

Sometimes While I'm Chanting
Marge Piercy

Sometimes while I am chanting
the Hebrew words become liquid
as warm rain and I slip through
them as if they were water parting
to let me down to a clear place.

Sometimes when I am praying
the words stop and the darkness
rises like water in a basin
and I come into silence
rich as the heart  of a rose.

Sometimes when I meditate
light sweels along my limbs
and opens sweet as apple
blossoms from the hard wood
of my knobbly spine.

Light slides behind my eyes
light rises in my throat
light pulses in my chest.
There is no I  only you  only
light burning and unburnt.

The barber with mirrors on both sides knows
to bring the scissors closer,
and closer, and closer.

Billions of stars fold away
toward infinity,
but one or two are just as close
and we can see.

You look into the lake
and the lake looks back--
Picasso ruffles the water;
you know you're still here,
but you hold your breath
until you see that stick bend
below the surface,  and you think,
"Maybe nothing is far away."