You Have Become a Forest

One day when you wake up, 

you will find that you have become a forest. 

You have grown roots 

and found strength in them 

that no one thought you had. 

You have become stronger and more beautiful, 

full of life-giving qualities. 

You have learned to take all the negativity around you 

and turn it into oxygen for easy breathing. 

A host of wild creatures live inside you 

and you call them stories. 

A variety of beautiful birds rest inside your mind 

and you call them memories. 

You have become an incredible self-sustaining thing of epic proportions. 

And you should be so proud of yourself, 

of how far you have come 

from the seeds of who you used to be.

- Nikita Gill, You Have Become a Forest

On Joy and Sorrow

On Joy and Sorrow
from
The Prophet
by Khalil Gibran

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.


Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the reassure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

This Quintessence of Dust

"I have of late,
—but wherefore I know not,—
lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercises;
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame,
the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you,
this brave o’erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,
why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty!
in form, in moving, how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
man delights not me..."

- Hamlet II.ii

This Cursed Hand

What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow?

 - Claudius in Hamlet III.iii

First Grief

First Grief

Last night, my daughter—
Mine by right of love and law,
But not by birth—
Cried for her "other mother."

Accountable
And duly baptized she may be,
But eight is young . . .
For grown-up grief,
The first I cannot mend
With Bandaids,
Easy words,
Or promises.

I cannot tell her yet
How often I have also cried
Sometimes at night
To one whose memory
My birth erased;
Who let me go
To other parents
Who could train and shape the soul
She had prepared,
Then hid her face from me.

-Margaret Munk
(found here)

"Their Voices Bounce Off Mirrors"

Their voices
Bounce off mirrors
Sachet through shearings
Leap to lightning rods and
Spiral there like gymnasts
Exuberant and free.

Their chant is to him

Robed, they perform their
Rituals at basins and mirrors
Chattering holiness like ancient
Priestesses in temples at rivertide
Touched and touched
Cleansed and guided
Touched and touched
They become beautified.

Their chant is of him

And should a child enter there
She is accepted as a holy thing. Mooring her innocence
Among the mirrors, They reach to her
As a Princess reached
For a babe in the Nile

Their chant is by him

And when they conclude their observance
They depart from the sanctum of ease
And return to him
To whom they are wed
By whom they are led
Through whom they are said
Beloved and Beloved

In his image they are created.

- Kristine Barrett


"The author of this poem, Kristine Barrett, was shocked to find that I thought
the poem was about temple rites. I was shocked to discover that she had, in
fact, written the poem after a visit to a beauty salon. Reading through the
poem again, I saw the similarities—that the rites of becoming beautiful,
inside or out, were directed toward the approval of a beloved lord, human or
divine. Most jarring in that haunting imagery of women's voices and hands,
the basins and mirrors, is that the final reflected image is male."
- Linda Sillitoe
(from here)

Sturdy as Home Grown Tomatoes

The Candy Palace

She came to the throne because she thought
it was time. The exact hour before the alarm.
Born to the Kingdom, she had all the trimmings,
certificates bounded in lace, exact replicas
of how it was done. Of course he held
his scepter of having passed through, and knowing
he should (or could) he promised to make her his
Queen-for-a, well, forever. She, as the manuals suggest,
fell in love with his promise. No one could anything
but not see how there was no end
to the rings he began to leave in the tub.
The thing was he had to hurry to get back to
the pumpkin that was waiting to turn and never
did. Still, she attended his table and served
appreciative rolls. She kept the throne
sturdy as home grown tomatoes. This was good.
The base of the throne, however, had a predisposition
to lean. He could not sit squarely and she had lost
her fixings. Night sickness, she began to think,
could account for her yearning for nutmeg
and flour not out of the mill, this longing
for something more common, a touch perhaps.
She remembered in Primary playing Persephone
not wanting to hold the wet hand of Pluto, even to march
for the crowd. In the end of course, it was a renunciation
for air, air.

- Emma Lou Thayne
(found here)