POETRY MONTH

 April is national poetry month and I would like to start
with some poems by members of our Order. The first is by our Mother Dilecta (here at OLR).

9/11  A Commemoration   

Lewis Williams

                                                                       

waking very early                                                      

            solidly dark here in the West

            day dawning on the East coast

            I find myself praying among the stars

              darkness not a void but

              a setting for the stars,        

              interplay of dark and light.

an owl murmurs,

            murmuring a question

            ...we know now the answer

            a stark 2,817 soul mates,

            at least 2,817, the number unsure

            as survivors of ground zero surface

            having forgotten their own names

so brief the passing

            of the shooting star  

            then across the sky

              a pace  regular and magnetic

              the passage of a plane silently

              (for some the last sensing was     

               sound and firey, fuel-fury).

                        From the distance of today

                        a stark beauty and patterned

                        meaning emerges in the sky:

                        somehow imbedded in the vastness

                        "Yahweh, God our God is One

                                    Allah is great

                        Bless be Jesus Christ,

                                    Firstborn of all creation"

                        someday to be uttered as

                                    effulgence not controversy.

later in the light of day

            the vastness remains

            with no points of brightness

            or connected patterns

but the stars unseen

            are always with us.