Meditations in Fast Times: 39. I am torn open

Note to Readers: “Meditations in Fast Times” is a devotional writing experiment for the Season of Lent. Each day during the season, I am writing a poem as a meditation on, taking as my inspiration and intertextual basis, T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, as well as incorporating the daily office, current events, and other readings—some the same as those Eliot used while composing his seminal work and others. This is the penultimate poem of the cycle.

                39.

I am torn open,
The land is shaking;

mend me from my fears,
for all is quaking.

I look around me,
among the rubble of the place,
this is a community, this is home;
the people here have risen together here,
not all of us brilliant, rich or even nice,
but determined here to be,
united in this time and this space,
unwilling to accept defeat, to roam
aimless, beaten, to descend wholly into vice;
disasters help us to see.

The land is torn open,
the whole world is shaking;

save us from our fears,
for all is quaking.

I think of a King,
of three or more touched by Art,
plying their peculiar genius to some service,
uniting despite the challenges of time and division,
of places remembered, re-visioned, restored;
I hear a bell ring,
calling each of us to take some part,
in making or renewing bonds, soothing the nervous,
returning things to rights with care and precision,
finding and cherishing places we thought we’d explored.

We are all torn open,
all the buildings are shaking;

guide us from our fears,
while all is quaking.

We bury the dead,
but we cannot stop while others lie dying,
we must keep calm and carry on the healing,
finding new protocols, building better systems,
because we cannot go back;
it has all been said,
if we say we have not heard it, we are lying,
the life in our care is not for wanton stealing,
yet despite our miserable failures, still glistens,
with vitality even we cannot crack.

Our gates are torn open,
but all has stopped shaking;

Let us dry our tears,
and serve our remaking.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen 

Turning

Leaves cascade to the ground,
a small music,
played by the wind;
it has begun,
this turning,
detaching
and falling
to freedoms
complicit with windy whims.

It is just the beginning
—we must be clear about that—
the start of a dialogue, a transition;
each leaf, as it turns,
glows, even as it fades
under the Autumn sun,
and, dying, dries,
and when it falls,
this is only a newer
hello,
the very latest one.

A slow dance,
this seasonal song,
is merely one of nature’s
many conversations;
the cold breath of Winter
may find an answer
in the winds of Spring,
or a balmy reply
on Summer’s sunny crest.

To turn,
to burn;
to prance
and dance,
unpinned
by the wind,
upended
(mayhap unintended)
and made free
to flee and be
and to become,
with all and some,
wholly changed material,
electrically ecstatic and
eclectically charged
for both the now and next.

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Arose In Winter

i.m.  Pauline D. (1922-2011)

She had filled every role,
from child to grandmother,
from partner to friend,
from advocate
to the glue,
which holds people together,
if they will allow it to do so.

People mattered most:
family,
community,
the joys of fellowship;
the affirmation,
and meaning, of life—
a gracious and flourishing tree.

Time went on,
slowing movement,
but never dulling sense
in those matters
that meant most.

But, winter had come
and her tree
had long been losing
its precious leaves;
all her friends
were gone.

Home and place
had contracted,
from mansion to house,
to now a compartment,
too small to contain
the grandness or the minutiae
of her experience, much less
the people, places and things
that had been her life
and meaning.

The last leaf on her tree,
she realized.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for,
she said.

Though brought low by illness,
still was she able
to feel her feet
roaming the beaches
that had long memorized
her footfalls and
to hear the voices of those
whom she loved,
and who loved her.

Systems failed, though,
body resistant to the will.

Take me home,
she said.

From a final comfort
in her own bed,
she let herself go;
a well-loved, well-lived leaf,
the very last on her tree,
she let herself go,
to drift downward
to the ground.

Take me home,
her spirit breathed.

She was answered
by a breath of wind
that raised her up,
a small fanfare of fluttering free,
and carried her off to the sea.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen