Friday, July 16, 2021

Godforsaken: A New Poem

 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,




SoulCollage® card with my own teraphim


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