Poems for Collective Healing (1)

Danez Smith, poet "let this be the healing / and if not let it be"

Read feature story with Smith in A&U magazine. 

"Holding the Light" by Stuart Kestenbaum

See Kestenbaum read the poem here, for South Portland Public Library
​

                          ~for Kait Rhoads
Gather up whatever is 
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled 
in the waves or fallen 
in flames out of the sky,

for it’s not only our
hearts that are broken, 
but the heart
of the world as well.
Stitch it back together. 

Make a place where
the day speaks to the night
and the earth speaks to the sky.
Whether we created God
or God created us

it all comes down to this:
In our imperfect world
we are meant to repair
and stitch together 
what beauty there is, stitch it 

with compassion and wire. 
See how everything 
we have made gathers 
the light inside itself
and overflows? A blessing.

​Source: poets.org.  Originally published in  Only Now  (Deerbrook Editions, 2013)

"a little prayer" by Danez Smith

let ruin end here
let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter
let him enter the lion’s cage
& find a field of lilacs
let this be the healing
& if not   let it be

Source: poets.org.  Originally published in Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017).

"When Giving is All We Have" by Alberto Rios

Academy of American Poets · Alberto Ríos: "When Giving Is All We Have"

                                                      One river gives
                                                       Its journey to the next.
We give because someone gave to us. 
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it –

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give – together, we made

Something greater from the difference.
​
​Source: poets.org