I just had a delightful time sharing poems with a friend, sitting on our deck. After reading this one to her I decided maybe I could put it out a little further into the world.
Who would blame the gods
for forsaking us now,
given what we have done
to what was bequeathed to us?
Yet I feel their presence, the old gods,
the ones here at the beginning.
I sense them watching and waiting,
still filling the air with presence,
still charging the earth with fertility,
despite our efforts to poison them
and the waters as well.
Only fire is uncorrupted,
breaking out here and there
in the overwhelming heat
of unnatural summers.
But its intent to cleanse
rages out of control,
and the winds rise
to fan the flames and
to whip storms into
a frenzy over the seas.
Is there still time for us
to reverse course,
to remember the gods
of the earth and the sky,
the depths both below and above?
I want to cry out, “I won’t forsake you,
gods of our ancestors, goddesses of my heart!
I will honor the ancestral and the sacred.”
Maybe they will hear me, but I do not expect
them to intervene in our debacle.
It is up to us to adhere to the teachings
that we scrabble and scratch to unearth
below the glittering surface
we have been taught to sanctify.
Like Rachel, I will keep my teraphim,
my household gods, and worship
what they stand for and embody.
What is holy is holy.
The least I can do
is not abandon
what I know to be true,
