Poetry – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Autumn Light by Sara Wright

Where are they?

September’s light
illuminates one butterfly
in flight
Bittersweet losses
cast slanted shadows
pierce cool nights

morning mist
lifts as
light streams
through translucent
leaves

one acorn falls…

autumn’s breath
a gift of
primal scent

If I am The Mother* by Rebecca Rogerson

If I am The Mother

then I am holy. Made of moonbeams and shadows, darkness and light, questioned and answered, lost and retrieved;

discovered remains

If I am The Mother

then I am a reflection, a depiction, an inflexion of a cosmos in bliss and chaos, birth and destitution; a primordial sound unleashed to form planet, life, and

you and me

If I am The Mother

then I am fermented in humanity, and sour the illusions of precipices we’re told that

we cannot cross

Cross the trinity of three’s and return to

the magic of all

I went to the lake this morning . . . by Beth Bartlett

I went to the lake this morning, seeking the peace, sustenance, and perspective it so often provides. I had been particularly distressed and distraught the day before after watching the documentary on Christian Nationalism, “Bad Faith.” It was chilling to say the least. Among other things, the film demonstrates the longevity of Christian Nationalism in this country, dating back at least to the Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1865. However, the central theme of the documentary is the staggering influence of conservative political operative Paul Weyrich, who orchestrated the merger of conservative Evangelical Christians with the Republican Party in the 1980s. He founded the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell, the Heritage Foundation which authored Project 2025, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Council for National Policy – all of which seek to undermine democracy in order to bring about what these organizations and their followers call a “Christian nation,” by force if necessary. But as former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt states in the film, there is nothing “Christian” about this movement. It is pure nationalism, a striving for power requiring the dismantling of the institutions of democratic government as we know them. These extremist Republican strategists found a powerful base of voters by tapping into Evangelical Christians and manipulating the messages they received to fill them with fear, and found just the puppet they needed in the charismatic and amoral figure of Donald Trump. As we’ve seen in recent years, they have been quite successful in the destruction of government. After filling the Supreme Court with their chosen nominees during Trump’s first term, getting Christian Nationalist Mike Johnson installed as Speaker of the House, and getting Trump elected a second time despite the January 6^th insurrection, or perhaps because of it, they are now successfully dismantling or otherwise destroying the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Energy, Defense, Agriculture, Justice and more along with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Social Security Administration, the Federal Regulatory Agency. . . the list goes on. It’s all part of the plan to fulfill the “Seven Mountain Mandate” of dominionism[i], which seeks to impose its beliefs in seven spheres of influence: religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. As one of the Christian Nationalists interviewed in the film proudly said, “It’s the Christian Taliban.”

Time Dilates. Directs. Divines by Margot Van Sluytman/Raven Speaks

I am a pupil of this thing we call life. Swelling and swollen with the capacity to transform and to be transformed by language: Logos Incarnate=Word Made Flesh. Fleshy is this thing. And I am fully aware that Word sculpts me. Oft-times seeks an answer to the query: to what is my life tied? My response is bound with choice. I must forever remember choice. Choice that comes ever clearer the more mis-takes I have made, the sharper the dynamic degrees of un-learning weld my heart to my intellect in a new way. Age-ing and Sage-ing too, sturdy accomplices in this rollicking and rocky gavotte HERe on the body of Godde: Earth. Earth HERself ever evolving and unfolding. Mysteriously. Meticulously. With slow and un-seen purpose. Tied we are the HER and our choices. Each expressions of this vitally significant relationship.

On my way to the Keynote I was invited to share with the John Howard Society, I watched the summer heat and haze emboldened by the relentless forest fires in Western Canada, finger its way in Central Canada, brush strokes of clotted air painting the sky a raw grey, causing lungs to feel the squeeze, noting that the beauty of the vastness of the un-burning forests through which I was being driven, was in no way diminished, curtailed, or truncated. Trees. Roots down deep. Sipping moisture. Sharing, far below the Earth, millennia of silent stories. Of as yet un-tapped Wisdom. Breathing us. Beckoning us, who journey upon and with HER to listen. And listen closely. Ask. Listen. Do that.

Circle of Fire by Sara Wright

Moderator’s Note: This is the final part of Sara’s poem that was posted last week. You can read it here.

Part 1

She burned
in raging fires
swamped by
merciless floods
crossed mountains
of grief
so wide so deep
crushed Silence
in her sleep
unknowingly
accompanied
by Owls
and Winter Wren
Marked by Bear’s
sharp Protective
Claws
Circles of Fire

Two Poems: Crucifixion and Renewal by Sara Wright

(The Mark of the Bear is Upon Her)

CRUCIFIXION

Part I

She listens
to those
who intone
Betrayal
break hearts
open

love
pours golden
honey
healing
blood
soaked
wounds

truth
often
lies hidden
deep
beneath
kindly words

torment
tears holes
in fragile
skin

without
closure

The Furious Sun in Her Mane: Nine Poems to Goddesses by Annie Finch

Poet’s Note: I composed this sequence of poems for performance, for chanting, and for devotion. I wanted people who would hear, read, memorize, and speak each poem to channel the original energetic patterns that the poets who best knew that Goddess used to connect with Her. So for each poem, I researched the meter and prosody of the original language in which that Goddess was first worshipped. Then I carried the exact rhythmical pulse of Her language into my poem to Her in English.

The sequence was set to music by composer Laura Manning and choreographed by Georgia Bonatis, and I directed and performed a devotional dance collaboration version of it in 1994. That archival video of this performance has just been recovered for the first time in 31 years. It is now posted on my Youtube channel.

PEOPLE GET READY by Esther Nelson

I recently attended an event in Salem, Virginia, put on by The Salem Choral Society titled “People Get Ready,” directed by S. Reed Carter IV. This popular group has sung on numerous occasions locally as well as performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. The choir (11 men and ~45 women) sang fourteen selections. The song arresting my attention was “People Get Ready.”

From Wikipedia: “‘People Get Ready’ is a 1965 single by the Impressions, the group’s best-known hit, reaching number three on the Billboard R&B chart. The gospel-influenced track was a Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999), American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. This particular composition displayed [his] growing sense of social and political awareness…. In 2021, Rolling Stone named this song the 122^nd greatest song of all time. Martin Luther King Jr. named the song the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and often used the song to get people marching or to calm and comfort them.”

Three poems by Rebecca Rogerson

Don’t Take Me to Church

He never let me eat communion because I wasn’t a catholic, but it was okay for me to eat his dick. My tiny palms forced to stroke him, the same dextrous hands that coloured in the lines.

I knew his God wasn’t my God. I knew she saw everything there was to see and that he wouldn’t reach salvation; no matter how many Hail Marys he said at mass in Ireland.

The Virgin Mary knew what he stole from me, what they steal from all of us.

I couldn’t fall apart on Sundays at noon when he took me to church—before he took me home after he did what he did—to the little Jewish girl who didn’t know she was Jewish.

I couldn’t remember it because I buried it in Survive, until, it was resurrected by nightmares and demons who professed caring and brought me to altars of despair to vomit up all the darkness, and when there was no more left to cleanse or tear out; light ripped in.

No one talks about the embarrassment that goes along with the telling, sharing and surfacing of sexual violence. How it comes up, how it comes back. How we’re always haunted by the deadbeat dead and grabby grandfathers who try to reach from there into here, pretending they are made of heaven.

I fled a friend’s choir concert because perpetrators keep stealing time, moments, sleep, joy, and friendship, in churches and baths. On my flight, I hunted for nature, soil and anything else that felt most alive in the hilly town of Nelson. Pretending I was like everyone else, I hid the panic that strikes broken hearts.

Two Poems by Rebecca Rogerson

ROSE WATER

I am the holy place somewhere in the stars of eternity,
someone’s daughter who seeks reprieve somewhere.

Yetta changed her name to Mary. She tried to erase her past, not as a Jew, well maybe some of that, but more as a Jew molested by her father—a frum[1], “Monster”, his daughters called him.

On my altar sits my tallit alongside a Menorah with seven brass holders. No stars of David—before or after the decimation of Gaza. Can rose water sweeten our hearts? We pour it graciously in our hands, hoping the lost petals heal our guts and brighten our thoughts. She searches hungrily for hope in glass bottles adorned with Farsi, that cost $4.29 each.