"All've It" by Matt Moberg

All’ve It
By Matt Moberg

I think every human being
eventually has a moment
where they are standing outside in sweatpants
that have lost the will to be pants,
holding a trash bag, a divorce, a parking ticket,
or some other receipt from the universe
that says, “surprise, this too is part of it.”

And then the sky bruises purple.

And the air touches your face
like it knows your whole story.

And suddenly you realize:

all the real is actually unreal.

The dirt.
The breath.
The weird little bones in your hands.
The fact that we are here,
on a floating rock with pollen counts,
paying bills,
missing dead people,
loving living people
who say “leaving now”
while still fully naked and looking for socks.

And still,
the moon clocks in.

No applause.
No benefits.
No note from management saying,
“Great work being ancient and luminous again.”

Just the moon,
working nights
like a single mother with no applause,
packing silver lunches
for every dark thing
that still has to rise.

Tell me that isn’t holy.
Tell me there is a better word
than sacred
for the way light keeps returning
with no guarantee
we will actually stop and take note.

I know people who believe in therapy,
probiotics,
tarot,
twelve-step meetings,
manifestation journals,
and waiting exactly eleven minutes
before texting back
so they do not appear emotionally available,
even though their whole nervous system
is standing in the driveway holding flowers.

And underneath all of it,
every ritual,
every doctrine,
every smoothie with chia seeds,
the prayer is the same:

Please let me be loved.
Please let me be forgiven.
Please let this strange little life
mean something
before my lower back
submits its formal resignation.

What is going on?

For real tho—What is this place?

This unbearable tenderness
of being alive long enough
to watch steam lift from coffee in winter
like a soul practicing leaving.

To see your friend laugh so hard
they slap the table
as if joy is a mosquito
they are trying to kill.

To hear a child say “pisghetti”
and, for one shining second,
realize language
has finally been improved.

I know I already noted this in the first piece,
but the older I get,
the less use I have for certainty.

Certainty has never made me pull over
because the sunset looked like God
dropped a jar of peach jam
across the whole midwestern sky
and decided to be lazy
and not clean up.

Certainty has never made me gasp
at rain on hot pavement.
Certainty has never found me
in the cereal aisle,
holding Captain Crunch,
suddenly remembering
that everyone I have ever loved
was made from stardust,
hunger,
and a series of decisions
we probably should have slept on.
No.
It has always been awe.

Awe was the first church.

Before steeples.
Before committees.
Before men got involved
and started making rules about skirts.

Awe was there
with its wild hair
and muddy feet,
saying:

Look.
Look again.
Look until looking
becomes love.

Awe, and soup.

Awe, and someone rubbing your back
when you are sick.

Awe, and old couples at Target
arguing gently about avocados,
as if marriage is not one vow
but ten thousand errands
performed beside the person
who knows exactly
how you like the cart pushed.

Maybe gratitude
was never meant to sound elegant.

Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Damn.
That woodpecker is trying
to beat that tree from itself.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you, body,
for continuing to drag me through this world
despite the many slim jims
I have done to you
at gas stations.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you to the dogs
who lose their entire minds
when we come home
as if we have returned from war
and not Walgreens.”

For me, that might be my gospel.

That joy that does not wait for us
to be impressive but only needs us
to come through the door.

Because the truth is,
this life is devastating.

And ridiculous.

One minute you are 22 and invincible,
driving too fast,
eating gas station nachos
with the confidence of a Greek god.

The next minute you are googling,
“Can sneezing cause a hamstring injury?”
and the answer is,
apparently,
“Welcome to the second half of your life.”

But even now—

even tired,
even grieving,
even emotionally held together
by iced coffee, playlists,
and one very specific wolves hoodie—

we keep finding reasons
to stay soft.

We plant tomatoes
even though grief is real.

We bake bread
even though the news is on fire.

We send photos of the sky
to people we love
with captions like,
“LOOK,”
as if beauty is an emergency
and we are all volunteer firefighters.

We keep saying,
“You have to see this,”
because wonder
is the oldest form
of resurrection.

So here’s to the believers
and the atheists
and the agnostics
and the people whose entire theology
is just trying not to cry
in the DMV line.

Here’s to the people clinging to faith.

Here’s to the people clinging to Xanax
and oat milk
and the one group chat
where nobody pretends to be okay.

Here’s to the tender-hearted weirdos.

The accidental mystics.

The ones who can contemplate mortality
for six straight hours
and then become emotionally attached
to a perfect peach.

The ones who know
despair has a mouth,
but so does laughter.

May we never stop being drop-kicked by beauty
in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.
May we never become so polished
that we forget how to stand
in the Starbucks line of existence
with our dumb, gorgeous hearts open,
feeling the enormity of it all
rattle around in our bones
like thunder
looking for somewhere to laugh.

And may we remember:

whatever else this is,
whatever mess,
whatever miracle,
whatever cosmic group project
no one was prepped for—

all’ve it is astonishing.
that we are here.
that we have loved enough to be ruined.
that the moon keeps showing up.
that bread exists.

So pass it on.

Tear off a piece
with your bare hands.

Take it in as you take it down.

And then go outside and look at that moon.

https://www.facebook.com/matthew.l.moberg/posts/i-think-every-human-being-eventually-has-a-momentwhere-they-are-standing-outside/10102752320674739/

Poem In Your Pocket Day 2026: "Fear" by Kahlil Gibran

Today, the last day of National Poetry Month, is also Poem In Your Pocket Day, and I am carrying around a thoughtful piece by the legendary Lebanese-American writer, poet, and visual artist Kahlil Gibran. It speaks to a cycle and a greater order that we might not see from our possibly limited vantage point. I will be sharing it with others and synchronicity will make certain it finds its way to someone who needs to hear it.

Fear
by Kahlil Gibran

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

"Friendly Skies, or, Black Woman Speaks Herself into God" by Ashley M. Jones

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. For our last poem of this 2026 National Poetry Month (but stay tuned for one more poem tomorrow on Poem In Your Pocket Day!), I present a truly gorgeous poem from Ashley M. Jones about pride of identity.

Friendly Skies, or, Black Woman Speaks Herself into God
by Ashley M. Jones

—we’re taxiing at an airport named after american president ronald reagan. people tell me he was an american hero. sometimes, labels are jumbled in the big dark bag we call manifest destiny. sometimes, things get lost in its velvet mouth.

—as we move across the land in a machine built for sky, we wait for the flight attendant to tell us how to be safe, how to will ourselves alive thirty thousand feet in the air if we find ourselves falling to an inevitable end. how to build a raft from breath alone to face a gulping sea.

—our attendant, Valerie, is Black. her braids hang, a holy rope, in a high ponytail. her eyes, divinely familiar. when the disembodied voice booms over the plane speakers, we see her mouth moving in time with its words. to ensure your safety, she says. secure your mask before helping others. her lips make the shape of our salvation.

—reader, this might be how you felt sitting in the movie theater’s strobelit box when you saw Black Panther, when you realized a Black person could feel as big as God, could save the world and make it home in time for dinner, run a whole country against no white background, could know all the land and its secrets and roam the afterworld, leisurely resting after a life of nothing colonized, after all the sweat of work done just for self, of work unstolen and unenslaved.

—and i know Valerie isn’t God but i also know that she is, standing here, commanding this voice we thought was faceless, using her earthly body to show us the way. here, with her hands which will pour us fizzy drinks in our little plastic cups, usher trash from our laps into an unknown abyss—i know if  this thing goes down in a fiery cocoon, she will part every sea to cradle us, she will speak to us through the fire—you are that you are.

https://ashleymjonespoetry.com/

"Coelacanth"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have posted work by myself each Friday. This poem is an ode to a preserved ancient fish, thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 1938, which was on display, hovering, fixed in a large tank of formaldehyde in a darkened room at the original Beaux-Arts-style Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Coelacanth

so alone,
swimming in thick ooze,
covered with plates
but soft underneath.
seeing the bones,
feeling the complex
prehistoric structure
with my mind.
squeezed like a grape,
you will pop.
a head like a potato
or a fetus,
bloated,
white and dripping--
you keep a secret very well

©JEF 1987

"Everything All at Once" by Oliver Baez Bendorf

For National Poetry Month, I want to share with you a poem that depicts the way I often view the world...an avalanche of humanity, a cascade of high to low and all in between...it can be overwhelming. It is depicted beautifully in the film "Wings of Desire" (seen here) and in this pure, lovely poem by Oliver Baez Bendorf...

Everything All at Once
By Oliver Baez Bendorf

                                           right now,
someone is having sex and someone
is dying and someone is trying to find
a lid so they can, before bed, put away
the soup and someone is dreaming
of that made meadow and someone
is gazing through a hospital window
to a faraway peak
and someone can’t decide what
to watch so they remain

on the menu screen for company
and someone wants to call but
can’t and someone wants to answer
but won’t and someone is studying
to become a moth scientist and someone
is dizzy and doesn’t know why
and someone is, after work, practicing
the vocal techniques of opera
and someone receives
a phone call saying listen it’s my

neighbor I told you about the singing one can you
hear it and someone
is clutching the heavy still warm hand
of a lover and someone is digging
a hole and someone is waxing
their back and someone
is remembering a poem permitting
bits and pieces to return
and someone
would do almost anything to forget

Oliver Baez Bendorf
Photo: Jennifer Koskinen

https://www.oliverbaezbendorf.com/

"Bring Me The Heads"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting work by myself each Friday. This one speaks about a world in turmoil, suffering inequality and injustice and violence, and a fracture in the ways of living in such a world.

Bring Me The Heads

Plates below us moving, grinding.
The earth is alive, serious, means business.

One city is underwater, another is underground.
Two views of the same world.
Neither of them have a chance.
This has nothing to do with myth or fiction.

I beg you to do something,
to create something, to step in,
slough off ribbons of time, of truth,
slice into our awareness, and if need be,
separate us like fighting children.

Of those who live above,
who would boil us, rip us apart,
make our hearts stop beating:
you send me to their cathedral
with these orders:
“Bring me the heads—”

©JEF 2010

"EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE" by Andrea Gibson

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am sharing exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. The late poet Andrea Gibson's vital, existential poetry was influenced by her journey through cancer. She died last July and left a catalog of devastatingly beautiful poems. Here is "EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE."

EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE
by Andrea Gibson

--I meant I am willing to do anything to live.
Even leave this world forever.

Even build a new home atop a nebula, stick a straw
into a buried lake on Mars, get tipsy on anti-gravity
and invent new constellations walking the lines

between undiscovered stars.

When god pulls me over and asks,
Can you touch your nose? I could say,

What nose?

I'd be bodiless, a shadow in reverse,
a patch of light made by the darkness

I escaped.

The psychology manuals say no one really wants
to die. They want relief. They believe they will never
find it in this world. That belief could be right.
Or wrong.

One would have to stay to find out.
Friend, if you stay, at least we will be
together, and I have an extra straw.

I could show you where the lakes on this planet
are buried. How do you not need light-years
to reach them. The dark years work too.
Sometimes better. Sometimes grief

is the fastest route to truth.

In addition to the straw,
I also have a slingshot that fires rock
bottoms directly at the sun until change

spills from its golden pockets--

that's how I got my hands on this
summer afternoon. We can do anything
with it. Sunbathe or scream or forgive ourselves
everything, most especially the thread we could not

convince to close our wounds.

If your wounds are still open, trust
they are doors to an answer,
and walk through.

What if we don't have to be healed
to be whole? There are holes in every inch
of the fabric that makes me who I am,

but pull the string on my back
and I'll say I LOVE YOU and mean it
whenever you want.

Come flood my home
with your eyes. I read that people scream
when they are in pain because screaming

actually lessens the pain--
anyone who asks you to hold your tongue
is asking you to hold the heaviest thing

in the galaxy. Forget them and remember you
can tell me anything about how hard it is
to stop flirting with your expiration date.

I understand being wooed by the finish line
of sadness. Infinity still sends me nudes
every day. I won't deny she looks amazing,

but I'm taken. My hand now promised
to writing every page of my story
except its ends. Friend, you are

who taught me that a difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier
to carry than sorrow, and you could lift a city

from how long you've spent holding
what's been nearly impossible to hold.
This world needs those who know

how to do that. Those who can find
a tunnel with no light at the end
of it and hold it up like a telescope

to show that the darkness contains
many truths that can bring light
to its knees. Grief astronomer,

adjust the lens, look close. Tell us
what you see.

https://andreagibson.org/

"A Birthday Cake"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting work by myself each Friday. This is a piece about fragility and feeling lost in a hostile place, far from comfort, far from safety...

A Birthday Cake

She got out the red Radio Flyer wagon that day,
she put on her shoes, white canvas sneakers with
thin rubber soles, very thin
and she put her child’s shoes on him, white canvas, thin soles,
it was his fourth birthday that day when they
set off, she on foot, he in the wagon, across the molten pavement
in this new place, so different from home, this land
of heat—fury heat, pain heat, so different from home:
the promises, turned out, were lies.
They set out to the market to get a cake
for his birthday, a small cake, all she could afford, with white frosting
and blue letters, Happy Birthday, they put the cake in the wagon
so he had to walk with his mother under a sun radiating
needles, so different from home, where they wanted to be, but
they returned the same way across the lava ground, so scorching it softened
the soles of their shoes and the cake in the wagon too, roasting the blue letters,
sliding, running, so they didn’t even say Happy Birthday anymore.
Not anymore. So different from home.

©JEF 2025

"We Have Enough Dead Friends" By Lena Oleanderson

For National Poetry Month, I am pleased I came across the work of Lena Oleanderson. This tender, vulnerable poem's urgency is deeply touching.

We Have Enough Dead Friends
By Lena Oleanderson

Come over. The doors are open,
my flat's a mess and
so is my heart
but the doors are always open.
Come over. I will make soup,
probably from frozen but
the important thing is
we will both eat.

You don't have to be dying,
but if you are,
or you feel like you are,
or if living's been hard,
call me, and I will show up.
It doesn't have to be that bad,
it doesn't have to be bad at all,
but if it is, please call.

Do you want me to do the groceries?
Do you want me to mop the floors?
Do you need to be held;
you don't have to be dying to be held.
If you want me to be there, I want to.

I'm on the bathroom floor again,
and breathing is hard,
and eating's been hard, and sleeping,
the world is a laden thing
rolling around on my chest lately.
Just being alive is heavy tonight,
but we have enough dead friends.
Come over.

https://lena-oleanderson.tumblr.com/

"Paul's Neck"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I will be posting work by myself each Friday. I wrote this poem forty years ago when we were still struggling for rights and visibility was crucial. After a period where things seemed to progress, we now find ourselves back in danger, struggling to retain rights that can be taken from us, struggling to avoid damage and violence...

Paul's Neck

Trained over five summers
at football camp,
your neck is hard and thick
like a side of beef.
My love for you
is visceral.
I can eat it
like raw meat.

Your Daddy’s rich
and your Ma’s good lookin’
and some day they’ll
speak to you again
but until then,
I wouldn’t cry.

One of these mornings,
we’re gonna rise up
singing the same song
and it will be louder than
any church organ,
louder than any
protest march.
How dare they say
our love is wrong
when your neck is
the kindest,
the saddest
of all.

©JEF 1986

Happy National Poetry Month 2026!

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets since 1996. And this year marks the celebration's 30th anniversary! Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

How to celebrate?
- Read your favorite poet again.
- Read some new poetry.
- Find a new favorite poet.
- Write some poetry.
- Leave poems for people to find in public places.
- Read poetry out loud to family and friends.
- Dream a poem.

Throughout April, I'll be posting poems, some by me, some by others, as well as a series of lyrics to popular songs that double as exquisite poetry.

And this year, Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 30th! Every April, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, people celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and on social media using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poem in Your Pocket Day was originally initiated in 2002 by the Office of the Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration. In 2008, the Academy of American Poets took the initiative to all fifty United States, encouraging individuals around the country to join in and channel their inner bard. In 2016, the League of Canadian Poets extended Poem in Your Pocket Day to Canada.

To kick off the month, here is an incredibly inspiring quote about what it is to write poetry from Maggie Smith:

"Poetry isn’t just something I write, it’s how I move through the world—how I see, and hear, and imagine. It’s a way of being. I wouldn’t have it any other way."
--Maggie Smith, from Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life (Washington Square Press, April 1, 2025)

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

https://poets.org/

To Evolve

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
--Aldous Huxley

“That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
--Mary Oliver, from “Long Life: Essays and Other Writings”

“I don’t believe in perfection. I believe in evolution.”
--Dominique Crenn, from "Rebel Chef"

January Night Prayer by Ursula K. Le Guin

On this last night of January, here is the powerful Ursula K. Le Guin poem, "January Night Prayer."

January Night Prayer
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Bellchimes jangle, freakish wind
Whistles icy out of desert lands
over the mountains. Janus, Lord
of winter and beginnings, riven
and shaken, with two faces,
watcher at the gates of winds and cities,
god of the wakeful:
keep me from coldhanded envy,
and petty anger. Open
my soul to the vast
dark places. Say to me, say again
nothing is taken, only given.

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/

"The world has poetry inside it..."

“Poetry outlasts everything. It’s a primeval spirit. It’s probably the first speech. It comes with speech. It’s what children do, when they play with their first words. And it comes from nowhere, and it always goes on. And there’s no way to lose it, but people don’t know how to find it. People think they don’t know how to read it, and that they don’t have any need for it. Maybe they don’t have any need for it. I don’t know. The world has poetry inside it anyway.”
--from “The Person Who Performs” by Alice Notley, with Janique Vigier

"What is there beyond knowing" by Mary Oliver

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. For our last poem for this 2025 National Poetry Month, I present a beautiful poem from the incredible Mary Oliver. She died in 2019 leaving behind a stunning catalog of work and this poem, "What is there beyond knowing" is a deceptively simple meditation on the human perspective of being alive in a big, sometimes unfathomable world.

What is there beyond knowing
by Mary Oliver

What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can't

turn in any direction
but it's there. I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same—what shall I say—
moment.

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
    and the weeds.

https://maryoliver.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Star-Field On Red Lines" by Duncan Sheik

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

Duncan Sheik made a splash when he first appeared in 1996 with a debut album that featured a marvelous song called "Barely Breathing." Since then, he has released nine albums and created the music and lyrics for Broadway musicals including the multi-Tony-award winning "Spring Awakening." As a lyricist, he has always presented compelling stories and this song, "Star-Field On Red Lines" from his 2006 album "White Limousine" is quite evocative, and can work for multiple periods of American history like the Cold War in the 1950s, perhaps Vietnam in the 60's and 70's, and maybe even Bush the First's Gulf War in the 90s.

Star-Field On Red Lines
by Duncan Sheik

Playground
Home-land
A countryside to save

Blue skies
Air-space
Soldiers to raise
And sacrifice

Strong armed
Christians
Oiled up and fed

Safe as
Houses
In aprons of lead
And sanctified

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

How much
Longer
This empire of night

The smallest
Subjects
All begin to fight
And multiply

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

Head down
Brace yourself
Here it comes

https://www.duncansheik.com/

"Art"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have posted work by myself each Friday. This poem is brand new after rattling around in my head for a few months and a few weeks of work, and I think it tells its own story. I hope you enjoy it.

Art

Did the makers know it wasn’t a game they made
but a life lived larger, out there somewhere
beyond the shelter of my bedroom, the house, our little town?
Christmas morning, 1970, stuffed animals, toys, and a box,
a treasury on post-cards: landscapes, portraits, still lives, portals
to different places and times.

Did the makers hope to bestow a gift:
the freedom to choose content, then form, or more radical,
the ability to choose form for its own sake?
On a round braided rug on a hardwood floor I studied
this collection of masterpieces I’d never seen
from museums far from the rug and my toy box,
learning to think and see in a new world,
an art-shaped world, an art-colored world, a world
of mansions and safes and movie-heists,
vast collections in hushed salons of
white, red, green walls on worn parquet.
A future event: I will raise my brush wet with pigment, touch canvas.
It whispers back now, “no journey is simple, but this one will be long.”

The slow embrace of a language, a joining with
arthritic sunflowers in a bulbous orange vase,
cotton candy angels floating in a sepia sky,
a dour farmer with pitchfork and mournful wife,
a green-faced barmaid in a raucous dance hall,
whips of black and white paint slashing a surface,
umbrella-ed couples on a wet cobblestone street,
a bleached cow skull on white sandstone,
a bright diner counter seen from an eerie, dark city.

I never learned their dice and tissue-thin pastel dollar rules,
they didn’t matter, I had no one to play a game with anyhow.
I didn’t yet know a future where I would weep in front of a
small, tenderly ordered bedroom in Arles with a yellow chair,
in front of a dizzying cascade into a pond of pink-purple-blue
water lilies rendered in rushed gobs of paint like cake frosting,
in front of a geometry of sunlight slicing through windows into an empty room
and feel the primal urge to use form color texture repetition symmetry
asymmetry the head the heart

©JEF 2025

Poem In Your Pocket Day 2025: "For A Student Who Used AI To Write A Paper" by Joseph Fasano

For today's Poem In Your Pocket Day, part of 2025 National Poetry Month, I am stuffing into my pocket a beautiful little gem of a poem from Joseph Fasano. It speaks to the inescapable nature of being and the only thing we have to do while we are here: don't shirk it, let it take us, describe it, create something from it.

For A Student Who Used AI To Write A Paper
by Joseph Fasano

Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.

http://josephfasano.net/

"Rending the Garments" by Ronna Bloom

For this National Poetry Month, I am grateful I came across the work of Ronna Bloom. She has six published volumes of poetry under her belt and creates works of penetrating tenderness and immediacy.

This astonishing piece, "Rending the Garments" speaks to the idea of recognizing painful life changes--not just death--with ritual.

Ritual is the technology of the sacred, and can give events a shape and meaning, especially when those events are hard to comprehend and process. And ritual within one's community gives a kind of support missing in the world at large.

Rending the Garments
By Ronna Bloom

There should be a shiva for every kind of grief—
the break-up, the diagnosis, the assault—
where people come unbidden and
wash their hands and casseroles
and hold you.

They do this all day or three times a day
for seven days so you know, you know
it happened and matters to more
than you, matters to a community of you.

What’s needed is wailing with an ax, frights,
outings, and touch. Touch and singing.
Can you hear me?
Has anyone done that for you, lately
Or ever? Come over, torn open the sky
and let the snow fall in the wrong mouth
to show there’s a rip in the face of the world?

https://ronnabloom.com/

"The Church of the Reindeer"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting work by myself each Friday. This piece is about an encounter with the natural world that goes beyond nature...an encounter that is enigmatic, transcendent. 

The Church of the Reindeer

In a white clearing at the bottom of a hill three men
stand in a row, each wearing a hat:
a turban of fur, a crown of wood, a crown of ice.

Supplicants, officiants, the surrounding fir trees
bend, brighten, settle under gathering snow.
If the gloaming could talk it would say,
“I take this form because it pleases me.”

For those who have died in a dream, you are welcome.
For those who can feel their heart beats, you are welcome here.
For those who hear music where there is none, you are most welcome.
Keep your eyes wide open, but be still, frozen to the ground.
In this clearing the air is even colder, effervescent,
a rustle behind a branch, a visible cloud of hot breath,
it is manifest before you, flanks, muzzle, tail, fur,
topped with velvet antlers and boughs of pine.
It says, “I take this form because it pleases me.”

It ambles past, gently brushes each one with a tine.
It disappears at the deckled edge of this forest dream,
all this held in your mind just for a moment.

©JEF 2024