The Garden of Verse: A Poem About Prayer, If Not Exactly Like One

       I made three attempts at writing poems on the theme of 'prayer' for the current month-of-March issue of Verse-Virtual, the online poetry journal to which I contribute regularly. 
        My first attempt sought to encompass the various meanings of this widely used word. I was astounded at discovering how many ways in which the word 'prayer' is used.
         Here's an excerpt from the resulting poem that appears in Verse-Virtual. 



Words for 'Prayer'

a stillness
a blank wall
on which nothing is projected

Or, perhaps, a 'collect'?
(pass the plate)
a grace? (before eating)
an invocation,
a word anciently used for the act of 'calling' for the presence of a god

A litany,
which may merely be a list of excuses
A 'thanksgiving'?
Oh, that happens in November

'evensong, matins, vespers'? -- what lovely words
for the way the sisters' voices join together
for a few transporting moments in "Call the Midwives"

'Appeal,' 'petition,' 'solicitation'?
All these sound like going to law.
If I am 'petitioning' the Almighty,
I am likely deceiving myself about the reach
of judicial redress
'Entreaty,'  'supplication'
I will reserve words of this sort for those occasions
when, God Almighty,
I am truly in trouble

Other such words,
'conjuration, cry, desire'
and also 'call,' 'claim,' 'request'
all sound like excited demands for attention
Not the way I wish to present myself
to the all-knowing, ultimately benevolent (so we trust; despite appearances)
solar divinity behind the shadows,
the great and powerful Oz above the little man
operating the gears

I'll take 'offering,' 'seeking,' 'contemplating'
in a state of 'mindfulness,'
that last full cup of aspiration,
a synonym in itself
serving as my current self-help reminder
for the state of consciousness
I wish to possess after giving a good shove
to the prayer wheel

Here we are
(as in the hymn "Here I am, Lord")
hungry for Attention

 

           I don't pray regularly in any religious tradition, but what I found when I tried to think my way through the concept was that my mind truly, widely, wandered. Does this happen to people who do pray regularly? 
            Whether it's viewed as devotional, or purely as a mental exercise, the theme of prayer surely provoked an outpouring of poems in this month's Verse-Virtual. Editor Firestone Feinberg reported that he received "a tremendous response -- definitely the most enthusiastic one ever" for an issue theme. 
            For my second attempt, I set out to write my own prayer beneath the straightforward title "This Is My Prayer," but almost immediately found myself stumbling into what people are now calling a "rabbit-hole" in the internet.

This Is My Prayer
 
Let's hear it for the Buddha of forgiveness
Next time around we will surely do better,
remember all we have learned
think first, sulk later, make better choices
(I can't think of any at the moment;
hopefully no snap quizzes in the afterlife)
 
[..... when I found my way of the rabbit-hole,the poem ends like this:]

I know of no way
to follow those tracks backwards
to the impressions of an hour
soft enough to be enticed from its mouse-hole
by liturgical longings
offered in words we are utterly unable
to understand

When our hours run out,
I have been told,
we must delve, as with a very long line,
to the bottom-most part
of the Always-Present
known only by its absence
like the missing beat
at the end of the song

and sound that beat
sing that note
that echoes
in the deepest well
of who we are 


 
The last of three poems, Prayer for the Waters of Sacred Confluence, draws on a phrase from a Hindu chant in the ever-expanding collection of 'yoga music' songs I often listen to. Again, I'm not part of this tradition, but I am moved by its songs, chants, and messages.
            This poem grew absurdly long and self-indulgent, even by my standards. It compares Eastern and Western religious ideas, and then this happy little rant pops sup:

Or how about "Ray Man Shabad"?
(translated, perhaps loosely, to "my mind without ego")
Yes, those first words do sound like 'Raymond,' whom everybody loves,
and the third like Shabbat, the Sabbath, on which the Masculine Pronoun rested.
Truly I think there is some confluence, or some spring of sacred origins,
from which all these words, and likely the notions behind them, spring

"Oh my mind," the chant goes
(the translation microbes in my think-machine working overtime)
 "practice Yoga in this way
Singee saach akapat kanthalaa
("Let Truth be your horn, sincerity your necklace")
You bet I'll singee and I will blow my horn of truth -- can anything be more blatantly appealing than this admonition?
I'll blow yours, too, if you let me.
And this, rather surprisingly --
as least to me, lover of simplicity and logical sequence that I am --
is followed by explicit instructions on how to die.
"Let the soul (self) be the alms bowl in which you collect the sweet Naam and this will be the only support you will ever need."
You bet your sweet 'Naam' I will.
Then follows a concise guidance on meditation and
the ashes you apply on your body,
leading to THIS BEAUTIFUL CHANT
"The Universe plays its divine music.
The sound of reality is shrill, but this is where God is."
Is this not the best of news?
Don't we all know (or wish to believe), at the bottom of our minds,
underneath all life's sound and fury,
this is really so?
We all know 'shrill.' Try to get work on the 'T' at rush hour.
The beggars line the stairs at Park Street and when you emerge onto fresh air and frigid pavement, the bearded prophet is reciting -- in the nagging voice of the dedicated hater --
how the sinful will suffer for all eternity.
(Guy oughta know; he's there already.)
Frankly, I don't think Jesus wants this particular
dirty-beard killjoy on his home team.
 


           To read these poems in their entirety, and check out others among the fine offerings in the March 2018 issue, go to http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html




The

The Garden of the Sunshine State: Green Gardens, Beautiful Beaches, Splendid Birds, and Old Birds (Like Us)

            I don't know why for years I avoided all thought of Florida. I think it was snobbery.

            Florida, I believed, lacked culture. Where would we be without our museums, our theaters, our universities? (In
Florida?)

            A story I heard years ago summed up this frosty attitude. When a New York City couple retired they said to one another, "Well all our friends have moved to Florida, I guess we should too." So they moved to Florida, settled in, and tried to find some classical music on the radio to listen to. 

            But couldn't seem to find any.

            "That's it," one spouse said to the other, "we're moving back to New York."

            Truth is, we spent four days in South Florida last week, and I only tried the radio once. Sure enough, no classical. We settled for 'classic rock' and listened to "The Dancing Queen." 

            Add your own punch line.

            It's true that people like us who live in Greater Boston or New York or another urban center enjoy more access to the delights of 'high' culture -- museums, live orchestras, live theater, art shows, opera, author talks -- than the sunny climes of Florida.

            But if you're not driving to the airport in a rented car to catch a plane home at vacation's end -- a pretty unlovable activity in any time and place -- Florida in March beats the hell out of any place we could be "up north."

            And after two or three months of the winter drearies, truth is we can live without these spiritual enhancements easier than we can live without sunshine, outdoor exercise, flowers, birds, warm water, and lots of growing green stuff all around and blue sky above.

            I was wrong about Florida. Particularly in late winter.

            In the sunny community of Delray Beach, in the first days of March, people as old as me, and older, sit around and talk all day with most of their clothes off.

            They gather in beach chairs and lounges around the pool, in shade if shade is what they want, in the sun if sun is what they want it (and buy skin screen by the quart). You can have it either way; or a little of both.

            Sometimes they sit on brightly colored foam floaties manufactured in a bizarre but effective shapes best described by the slang term "noodles" on which they float, in a reclining or even sitting attitude, potentially for hours.

            This is possible because in Florida they have heated pools outdoors. Sometimes fresh water; sometimes salt water.

            So if it the temperature isn't quite hot enough for a classic beach day, it's still warm enough to loll by the pool and float around in the warm bath-like water. To avoid any momentarily unpleasant cooling by condensation when you step out of the pool, there's always a transitional visit to the hot tub.

            On our four-day visit, hard on the heels of the most recent coastal-flooding Northeaster, we ventured beyond our pleasure dome to take in some local delights: An extensive Japanese Garden (the Morikami Museum and Japanese Garden https://morikami.org/) one day. A public boardwalk adventure trail built over wetlands heavily frequented by water-loving fowl (the Green Cay Nature Center and Wetlands, in Boynton Beach) and some slithery creatures prowling underneath, the next.

            We walked the lovely shores of nearby Delray Beach -- roiled to historically strong surf by the same Northeaster cyclone that drowned New England coasts -- before on the final day jumping into the storm-churned Atlantic. 

            Plus all that pool time.

            We had meals (and one of us had naps) on a sunny balcony, rubbing shoulders with the green lineaments of invading palms and visited by fat Florida pigeons.

            For evening repasts we were on the town. Our feats included luscious seafood in a cutting-edge emporium of Nouveau American cuisine; a pub meal in a quaint British-replica establishment with jazz on Sunday nights; and a popular Mexican restaurant with delicious tacos and $3 Margaritas (Monday nights only).            

            Ah, the pleasures of senses. I'm still working on the poems of this season. But I no longer have any difficulty making time -- winter time -- for Florida.

The Garden of History: "City of Immigrants"

            Too many of us, said Laura Wagner -- though she put the idea more delicately -- have forgotten who are. Wagner, the executive director of the Unitarian-Universalist Mass-Action Network spoke in a conference room at the Thomas Crane Library in Quincy in front of a mural that depicted Quincy's history and industries under the legend "City of Immigrants. 

            "Migrants,' or immigrants, have always been with us, Wagner said. They come -- or are brought -- when we need their labor.

            Indentured servants arrived even before the Pilgrims. They were brought to the Jamestown, Virginia, to serve a colony of fortune-hunters while they waited for the rumored gold to turn up. Given malaria, bad food, and poor relations with their native neighbors, the mortality rate was strikingly high in Jamestown.

            Slaves were brought from Africa to provide labor in labor-intensive industries such as tobacco, indigo and, especially, cotton growing.

            Irish labor built the famed Erie canal, and other 19th century public works such as the railroads that connected cities and towns in the Eastern part of the country.
            The demand for labor on the vast transcontinental railroads drove companies to recruit Chinese men (women were generally barred). After the railroads were built, the federal government passed the "Chinese Exclusion Act," one of our country's first immigration laws.

            In the 19th and early 20th century, Mexican labor was recruited for agricultural work in western states such as California. Later, when the Great Depression created massive unemployment, Mexicans and many US citizens of Mexican descent were deported to a country where they had never lived.

            And today, of course, immigrants work in many industries, including construction, agriculture, factories, restaurants and hospitality -- generally in jobs where the work is hard and the pay poor.

            The common theme in the history of American immigration policy, Wagner said, is "racism." Until the mid-20th century legal entry was limited to people who were "considered to be white." Who was white, and who wasn't, was an ongoing discussion until relatively modern times.

            Wagner spoke at a program on the state's proposed Safe Communities Act, along with the bill's chief legislative proponent,Senator Jamie Eldridge. The law, Eldridge said, is intended to protect the safety and well-being of Massachusetts communities and residents, including undocumented people, by setting reasonable limits on the state's police departments' cooperation with federal cops known as ICE.

            The proposed law calls for local authorities to refuse to detain immigrants at the request of ICE unless they have been accused of committing a serious crime. Driving offenses, for example, the most common way the undocumented run afoul of American law, would not result in local detention and likely federal deportation. 

           Eldridge pointed out that a "detainer" from ICE is not a judicial order. It's a request. "Every undocumented person is a target for ICE," Eldridge said. "I believe the police should focus on serious crimes."

            The Safe Communities Act responds to what Eldridge termed a "period of mass deportation" initiated by the Trump administration.

            The bill also forbids creation of a "Muslim registry," one of the racist schemes Trump promoted during his shameful campaign of pandering to racist stereotypes.

            The bill has been endorsed by the state's two police chief organizations because if immigrants, including the undocumented, are afraid they will be deported by people in uniform, they will avoid all dealings with local and state police. This makes good policing much harder.

            If immigrants believe local or state police are working hand in glove with ICE, Eldridge said, "it's going to create a chilling effect on not only that particular immigrant, but on the whole community. ... They're going to be afraid to interact with police and provide them with information about a crime going on in the community."           

            Undocumented people, in particular, are less willing to report domestic or other forms of abuse if they think their residency status will be challenged. They're less likely to take a sick child -- or an adult family member -- to a hospital, or even a doctor. Or show up for a parents' conference at school.

            They're less likely to complain if they're being cheated or mistreated at work. Or by a landlord.

            The same worry makes them  more likely to drive away from a motor vehicle accident. And less likely to appear in court if called as a witness or for any other reason.

            Police chiefs sought an amendment, agreed to by the bill's sponsors, to give police the option to hold people requested for detainment by ICE for up to six hours if the individual has a record for conviction of a serious offense, or if a detainee is under arrest for a terrorism offense.

            The bill also requires law enforcement to inform anyone detained by ICE that they have the right to hire an attorney to defend him.

             Eldridge's bottom line message to Massachusetts residents is to contact the two legislative heads who make things happen (or not happen) in the state legislature, House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Robert.DeLeo@mahouse.gov, and Senate President Harriette Chandler, Harriette.Chandler@masenate.gov, to urge them to bring the bill to a vote. 

            They should also contact their own representatives in the House and Senate to urge them to back the bill.   

            Few South Shore members are among the bill's sponsors, Eldridge said. Unfortunately, we live in timid times.

The Garden of History: A Nation of Immigrants With a Knack for Forgetting

           The American Paradox: A nation of immigrants with a shameful history of hating and opposing successive "new immigrant" groups that arrive on our shores or cross our borders in conspicuous numbers. 

             The United States of America was formed from 13 Atlantic Coast English colonies; at one point proud British empire-builders were referring to their country as 'the Atlantic nation.' That British Empire genesis means that English-speakers enjoyed in-group status from the get-go when a country called the 'United States of America' was being invented.

            English speakers weren't the only national group on the Colonial ground before independence. Those colonies included Dutch, Swedes, French and plenty of Germans and Scots (the last group inclusively 'British' since the merging of England and Scotland in the early 17th century) in addition to those with English ancestry,

            People of Northern European, Protestant backgrounds were largely accepted by the English-speaking majority of the new country, while other nationalities, even if they were European, faced antagonism, prejudice and a significant hazing period before they were accepted as American citizens like the rest of 'us.'

            This proved especially true for immigrants who came in large numbers, such as the Irish, Italians, Eastern European Jews and other nationals from all the other countries of Southern and Eastern Europe.

            English, Scandinavian, German, and the so-called Protestant Scotch-Irish immigrants continued to find acceptance in 19th century America. If, however, you were Catholic (or Jewish) and did not speak English, the doors to social acceptance were barred. It took a lot of battering, over decades, or generations, to force a way in.

            The concept that best accounts for the degree of acceptance or rejection newcomers faced in America generally goes by the name "race," a word that has no scientific definition. Scholars refer to race as "socio-political" construct. And while the US is hardly the only country to reject and 'otherize' some group of people on racial grounds, the United States defined itself from its beginning as a "white" nation.

            After a new form of government embodied in the US Constitution was adopted by the independent American 'states' in 1789, the first law to address the concept of citizenship, The Naturalization Act of 1790, defined those eligible to become citizens as "free white persons" of "good moral character."

            The concept of 'white,' those who study its history tell us, was created to distinguish an 'us' from the 'black' peoples encountered in Europe's age of exploration, colonization, and -- of particular importance to the US -- slavery.

            When 'white' Americans resisted Irish immigration (the first large influx of Roman Catholics) in the first half of the 19th century, the pejorative stereotypes used on the Irish were borrowed from those already abroad. As Noel Ignatiev explains in his intriguingly titled book, "How the Irish Became White" the "drunk and belligerent foolish Pat and Bridget were stock characters on the American stage" in the pre-Civil War period. The memes of this type -- "happy, lazy, stupid, with a gift for music and dance" -- were clearly borrowed from from the racist typography applied to the African-Americans brought to this country in chains. To which anti-Irish prejudice added drunkenness and criminality.

            While Irish immigrants worked their way into the fabric of the American mainstream -- building churches, schools, laboring on the country's ever-expanding infrastructure, claiming space in the big cities, electing councilors and mayors -- a new major challenge to the definition of whiteness was posed by the heightened stream of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe drawn to the promise of work in American factories following the Civil War.

            Writing on the large wave of Italian immigration during this period author author Ed Falco states, "America has a proud tradition as an immigrant nation, but it also has a long history of marginalizing those it marks as 'other.'" That darker heritage "includes suspicion, hostility, abuse and even death, leveled against ethnic groups as they arrived one after another in waves over the past 2½ centuries."      

            Falco focuses on an egregious example in which Italian nationals living in the US were treated to an American custom widely bestowed on black Americans: lynching.

             "...(T)he largest mass lynching in U.S. history took place in New Orleans in 1891 — and it wasn't African-Americans who were lynched, as many of us might assume. It was Italian-Americans."

            Eleven men were dragged from a New Orelans jail and lynched, after a court found them not guilty of killing the city's mayor. As shameful as the act was, Falco writes, the reaction of 'white America' made it worse. The victims were described by news sources in racist terms as "sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins." The crime was praised by Theodore Roosevelt as "a rather good thing." The New York Times opined that "Lynch law was the only course open to the people of New Orleans." 

             The lynch mob's leader was later elected governor of Louisiana on an openly racist platform. Italians, he said, were "just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in [their] habits, lawless, and treacherous."

            What Falco calls "marginalizing," and I'm calling "otherizing," is hardly uniquely American, but it has been a prominent feature of America's 'socio-political' history. Other examples include widespread prejudice against Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century and the similarly 'race'-based antipathy to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe such as Poles, Russians, Greeks, Serbs, and Turks during the same period.

            This is the kind of racially driven "otherizing" we to see today when, for example, an irresponsible politician such as the current occupant of the White House refers to Mexicans as criminals and "rapists."

            And when the same racist seeks to exclude all residents from a number of Muslim-majority countries from traveling to America -- even as students, valued employees, and eminent scholars -- because they're likely to be terrorists.

            Long ago, as a college freshman, my American History discussion group considered the institution of African slavery and wrestled with a scholarly theory that different races find it impossible to live together without absolute institutional boundaries. I don't believe that theory any more now than I did then; and I don't believe that "racial" characteristics make some national groups especially difficult to integrate into American society -- as the makers of restrictive immigration laws have argued whenever Americans have taken to scapegoating minorities for fundamental problems such as economic injustice.

            But I do believe that our history shows certain groups have had to pay a steeper price for acceptance into the mainstream by the recognized 'white' in-group than others. Maybe if we learn this history better than we have in the past, we can avoid repeating it.