I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive.

Gregory Orr captured what so many of us feel; a testimony of the power of poetry. In a profound essay, featured under the This I Believe series on NPR several years back, Orr related life-altering trauma from his youth and the role poetry played in working through it. This is the piece I share when I have introduced poetry to book clubs and friends that say, “I don’t get poetry.”

The last week as a Mormon has elicited a wide variety of responses through social media and conversations among family, friends, and faith communities. Watching the world through my own windows it’s apparent we still have some work to do to work through it all. Here’s our best therapy, the articulation of what we cannot put into other words; poetry. The following are written by or shared by our staff in recent days.

beyond Beyond
by Linda Hoffman Kimball

Romans 8:26 (KJV):  Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Integrity
And obedience –
Their pressures building
beyond Beyond –
Collide mid-cosmos
Shearing.

The schrapnel
Pierces us all.

The walls
Of our hearts
Rend, Rip
Ragged, shattered.
Sirens screech,
Megaphones
Skew words:
“Love” hisses;
“Protect” hits
Its bleeding targets
with precision.
“Depart!”
The harsh, rash command
from all sides.

And oh, the wailing, weeping,
Moaning
And oh, the hollow lungs
And the bones
leaking marrow.

I seek for Jesus
in the smoulder,

And my husband
Curls and cries,
Grief in his beard,
With groans
too deep for words.

Nephi and Laban
by Emily Milner

I thought
the Lord prepares the way
would mean a softened
Laban’s heart,
an easy path,
at most a gold-encrusted
bargain,
not a choice demanding all my
honor, all my soul.

I will go and do
the thing.

His head thunked.
His glassy eyes rolled back.

I gave
my innocent
and blameless self
to God,

it is better that one man
should perish

a trade
for bloodied clothes,
a stolen sword,
and brass plates.

I have become
what I disdained.
I too can kill.
Laban’s blood
and my relief,
my guilt,
welled up together,
mingled,
joined.

I was led
by the Spirit,
not knowing.

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save.

“I shall know why — when Time is over –”
by Emily Dickinson

I shall know why — when Time is over —
And I have ceased to wonder why —
Christ will explain each separate anguish
In the fair schoolroom of the sky —

He will tell me what “Peter” promised —
And I — for wonder at his woe —
I shall forget the drop of Anguish
That scalds me now — that scalds me now!

“Wild Geese”
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Prayer on the Red Sea Shore 
by James Goldberg, from his book  Let Me Drown With Moses

If these walls of water fall, O Lord,
let me drown with Moses.

And let me praise you with my final breath
for lending me his mad, prophetic dream
for letting me wander out past the edge of this world
beside a man who could see all the glory of Egypt
and still say it wasn’t enough.

If these walls of water fall, O Lord,
let me drown with Moses.
Yes, let me die with the same fire in my eyes
Moses saw in a desert bush.

Outwitted
by Edwin Markham

He drew a circle that shut me out–
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

Poetry in the form of The Cat Empire’s “The Crowd” lyrics:

Lord unchain my hands
let me sing inside the crowded trams
let me dance among the traffic jams
we’re going to sleep
on the St Kilda sands
Lord unbind my feet
let me mingle with the good people
we meet
water rising up into the street
unbind my feet
‘The apparition of these faces in
the crowd;
petals on a wet black bough”
Ezra Pound found the formula
our houses are rectangular
but life is curved not angular
so when things start to strangular
remember
rain still falls on the halls of power
new babies being born every hour
and the eagle keeps watch on the old clock tower
over me…
CHORUS
On the train I refrain from sitting with head and shoulders bowed
they told me time is of the essence
no wandering allowed
but then I saw a pretty girl
whose features stood out in the crowd
went ten minutes past my stop waiting for her to look around
I’m just another clown kicking around in Melbourne town
cooling out, relaxing watching the
world go round
so if you ever have the time
and you want to go drink some wine
I’d rather greet you with a smile
than greet you with a frown…
Lord unchain my hands
let me sing inside the crowded trams
let me dance among the traffic jams
we’re going to sleep
on the St Kilda sands
Lord unbind my feet
let me mingle with the good people
we meet
water rising up into the street
unbind my feet

Please add additional poems to our collection in the comments section.


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