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POETRY
Cleaning Women, Lemoa
Friday in Lemoa, cleaning day. Three women sweep
their way through church, bending over brooms with centuries of
practice. Five fat-cheeked boys with their mothers chins chase
lizards through shadows of saints and tumble out into the sunny arms of
noon. On the steps, dreaming of wine, snores the village drunk.
Guatemalas top ten boom from his radio. The women catch each
others eyes. They smile and laugh and whisper, strewing the plaza
with secrets shared.
Women of sturdy shoulders, ladies of fragile
lace, you come to meet your labor, your love, adorned in satin
blouses of deep rose, aqua, gold. Before the days sun fades,
your hands will sweep this crusted church clean of the dust of ages, clean
of its brooding demons.
From my window I see the steady wisdom of
your strokes, I hear the litany of your brushwork. I send you prayers
like ribbons to weave into your chain of secret sounds, into the
laughter that circles you like light.
-- Sr. Regina Bechtle, SC New York
How Easily a Miracle
How easily a miracle happens: everything falls into
place. No distant thunder, much less lightning, walks the sky.
No deus shifts the gears in machina. All pain, or fear, or loss
becomes irrelevant. The hoped for happening at once seems
pre-ordained, inevitable, comfortable as a pearl cupped in the palm
of my hand, natural as bloom from bud, quiet as an unparched
lawn, a pillow on which to rest and rise again.
How long
before Lazarus complained his porridge was cold?
-- Margaret Doyle Baltimore
Marrying into the World
for all my brothers and sisters
When I was young, we hated the Jews. We hated
the Niggers, the Spics and, to a lesser extent, the Guineas next
door.
Now grown, two brothers, two sisters, we have in our
loves branched out, like the four points of a compass. I married a
Black woman, Colleen a Jew, Katie an Italian, and Pete a lovely
Puerto Rican woman raised on a banana farm.
Eating is
interesting. When my brothers and sisters visit, with their spouses and
children, Leslie and I cook them okra, yellow rice and baked
beans. Its not that we dont eat other things when its
the two of us; its just: Thats what we always cook when my
family comes over.
At Pete and Evitas Leslie and I feast on
antipasto, cabbage and roast pork; their children give us small
piñatas filled with coconut candies. Katie and Tom prepare
us calamari and coleslaw; Colleen and Howard like to feed us
brisket and collards. We are, now, an international family, none of us
longing for the Jew- and Spic-hating days of our youth. Lucky are
we who go forth and marry into the world.
-- Bob Slaymaker New York
How am I? Dont ask
Back and forth on the rocker I consider:
Teeth missing ears buzzing eyes smogging heart thumping voice
fogging veins lumping
Muscles weakening nerves jumping
bones creaking mind bungling skin wrinkling stomach
grumbling
And Im becoming a bundle of verbs
-- Tom Brubeck Silver Spring, Md.
School of the Americas -- Watch
Nov. 21, 1999
We watched and heard the names unborn, 3 months, 5
months, pregnant, peasant, worker, farmer, priest we watched and sang
the songs of Africa, Mexico and Salvador freedom,
never again, and graces amazement
we watched and
listened to stories from Guatemala, Colombia, and Honduras of torture,
massacre, and hope.
We watched and wept stunned tears for Ignacio
and Elba, Ita and Dorothy, of anger, suffering, pain and death. We
stood ten thousand on that sunny day we crossed a line a world
away.
From Atlanta Sherman marched on to the sea. Five abreast we
marched in a peoples tide crashed the gates of a mighty fort
rolled across the Georgia green to wash away the stains of red, the
blood of mothers, children, fathers, grandfathers, uncles and aunts,
villages and bishops -- all brought down in pools of blood by bullets
and machetes, M-Ks and AKs weapons schooled by masters schooled at the
School of the Americas.
We watched and wept, listened and led on a
Georgia green at a school of red. Awake now to new schools of blood and
death we watch and listen, eyes dried of tears well close a
school, then teach for life well walk in hope in the coming
years.
-- Gary L. Chamberlain Seattle
Monody in Time of Disaster
The earth takes a deep breath. The ground coughs,
a terrible thrust. While in Chicago at 10 degrees a Polish woman is
kneeling with her knees, toes, and bare feet frozen to the floor.
Her last mile of sorrow a broken pipe, a broken dream. Do we mourn one
death or the thousands unknown? Thoreau would not understand the
graphics of grieving on a 27 screen.
-- Kathleen Gunton Orange, Calif.
Obedience
Well, now that you mention it, yes.
The
orbit is not a perfect circle but, rather, an
ellipse.
-- Sr. Pamela Smith, SSCM Orchard Lake, Mich.
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Please send poems to NCR POETRY, 115 E. Armour Blvd., Kansas City MO
64111-1203. Or via e-mail to poetry@natcath.org or fax (816)
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National Catholic Reporter, January 14,
2000
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