promised land

Let me describe my Promised land,
if I can
because milk and honey sounds like school lunch.

Take a look with me, see
what I see
and then, you'll understand the rush.

Let's start at the bottom and work
our way up--
First, no fire ants, 'cause I've had enough.

Next on my list, get a Satellite dish
so I can
pick up the station with the "good" news.

Let's nix American Idol, no Simon Cowell-- sure,
he's usually right,
but that doesn't make it right--instead, let's all sing without fear.

Sing loud, sister; sing proud, my brother--
in this land,
it's your heart that we'll hear.

Speaking of siblings, let's talk about family
in my Canaan,
it's breath in each lung.

Blood is thicker than water, sure,
but that living water
is the blood in the tie that binds.

Blood's tricky--it's sticky
and to be honest,
it covers our hands, but in my promised land,

we'll be over the thrill of the kill.
Let's ban crime,
and for real this time, let's put slavery to an end.

In this vision I see, we've put the "isms"
to sleep and
bid them our final farewell

So long, sexism; be gone, racism.
We're over it.
I hope no pessimism; we've ruled out legalism,

and I'm pleased that hedonism's no more.
Dare I say
we'll be past conservatism as well? It will be well.

Most of all, let's conquer this fatalism,
because it's the worst of all.
There is power in us, to make beauty of rust

and to make this idealist's dreams
into truth.
But before we're through, let's keep a few

of the isms that aren't all bad.
I think optimism
is cool, so let's teach that in school and be done

basking in the anxiety of life.
There's one more ism
we'll keep, and that's baptism, a deep

immersion in
grace--
LOVE--
truth.

Let me catch my breath, friends,
we're near to the end.
I can see the wheels in your mind turning fast.

You might say, "H, that's a lot!"
But really, it's not.
No, we're on the brink! We can swim or we sink!

Or even walk--Red Seas have been parted before.
It's all in your mind,
how high you can climb. The ropes course will

seem like a breeze. You might say,
"H, that's cool,
but what about you?

Where do you fit in this vision you see?"
That's easy.
I'm just one small part,

one beat of the heart, one step
on the way
to the promised land.

Enough of fear, I want to hear
what the rest
of you have to say.

God's running beside us, always ready to guide us.
Take that first step, friends,
and take me to your promised land!

Crossing Lines

Come down from the stars, and be close to me.
Let me feel you next to me on the cold driveway;
show me your pleasure at shooting stars.

Keep your blessings, your guidance, your plans.
I can't understand glory.
Sit with me and laugh so I can hear.

Don't build a hedge of protection; take a knife
to the brush. Don't bless my food;
share in the feast. Sit next to me.

Listen to me talk about my day as if
you didn't know it every step, and when I stop
for breath, ask another question, start me again.

Listen to my questions, even if I can't understand the answer.
Embrace me when I accuse, when I shout, when I doubt.
And when I cry into my pillow, be the hand on my back;

the tears falling into my hair are yours. I can't understand
glory, so keep on painting those sunsets and chiseling icicles.
I see most days; point it out to me like you think it's beautiful too.

The planets will keep spinning just as they always have, ever since
you told them too. Leave them be. And my cells will keep on
transcripting and dividing, just as you said.

I can't see a cell, or reach a planet. I can see flecks of gold in
wide eyes, and I can feel calloused hands, rough with
sawdust. Come sit with me on a park bench,

and let's feed the birds.

-Hillary Beasley

A Day for a Poem

It's never scientific, after all.
There is no checklist, no empirical process
no necessary weather forecast or
emotional state of being.

It's not a particularly sunny day, now
the rain has settled into stagnant pools among
the dead leaves, and the sun hides behind dull
clouds like the word you can sense but never find
when you need it.

My feet are cold, and my house nearly emptied.
My mother must have turned on the Christmas tree
before she left, and the dogs sleep beneath it like presents;
however, Christmas is still to come.

Today is no one's birthday, nor the anniversary of
a sweet gesture, so far as I can remember.
It's almost lunchtime, and no one has died,
or proposed, or graduated.

But most of our problems stem from being too
inwardly focused, I think, so just because I can't find
any socks, or see sunlight shatter in beams through clouds,
or make note of this day as when I found true love

doesn't mean that it hasn't been a tear-soaked,
laughter-filled and unforgettable day for someone else on
the other side of this earth. So I put my glasses on
and decided today was as good as any day for a poem.

seven years

I.

seven years, and I'm still 13
suffocating and bearing the guilt
of paralyzing grief, stolen from real victims

on the planes, on their phones,
praying and crying and fighting

in their offices, working and running
and jumping

in their uniforms, serving and
pulling and digging

and dying

What trauma can I claim
on the opposite end of the coast
with my family around me
with a TV screen and many miles
separating me
from the fire and the smoke

my tears are insult to theirs.
my trembling lip, just a muscle spasm
for I and mine live.

II.

seven years, I'm 13 again.
mourning for strangers and strangers' lovers
throat closing at half-raised flags
and the sound of prayer. feeling

smaller hands clutching the foot
of the cross again, children
tears falling on trembling arms
again, crushed on all sides
by realism and other church
members, clinging, singing,

eyes still stinging with
the grief that shames.

III.

7 years ago, I used to be 13,
aged and ideals deflowered,
eyes following the plane, the two crumbling walls,
hypnotized by flame,
flooding, shutting.

before my cousin was a fireman
they pulled him out of the rubble.
before my brother was a soldier,
he watched and no one gave him orders.
before I was ever on a plane,
I saw the ground coming at my face.

hands reach across the aisle in Washington,
hymns echo.

IV.

seven years, but I'll be thirteen somedays,
at least once a year.

grief real, not caught or imagined,
not wrong but rightly, mourning--
the assaulted skyline morning, mourning--
lost and lonely lives, mourning--
declaration of war, mourning--
ideals buried at Ground Zero, mourning--
fake patriotism and decorative flags, mourning--
fear, conspiracy, blame-throwing, mourning--
accusing God, lost faith, mourning
the way it used to be
before I was thirteen.

Who Are You?

Who are you?
The person poems are written for,
you. Who are you?
Are you different every time,
or are you an ideal?
Are you a young woman with brown eyes
and trembling hands,
or are you a man
who can't see, or who dies?

Are you Abraham Lincoln?

Are you a middle-aged school teacher
whose body has changed? But you still hope
he sees you as the lithe with brown eyes?
Or blue. Or are you the man
who still loves?

Are you a flower, or star, or sun?
A dalliant eagle or cracked oyster?
Do you breathe or heart-beat?

Are you a grandmother, a brother?
Are you Barret Browning's thee
or the Bible's Thee?
Are you God?

Do you want people to keep writing
poems about you? Do you even know they do?
I don't know who you are,
or even if you do.

Impression

Uncle Walt, this powerful play
is but a search for moments,
a quest for that fleeting
impression of significance found in a
meandering path through autumnal woods,
a brass quartet in a university cathedral,
a sudden refraction of the sun through green leaves.

We play our parts dutifully, all the while
wondering when the next fleeting moment
will happen upon us. We read in hopes that
a string of lovely words will call the feeling back.

What verses can I give, Uncle, but for my
rendering of these moments? I'm just a
girl, older than she used to be, leaning back in her
chair in a crowded classroom, taking in the flavor-filled
words of the Romantics like a child might
suck in a soft breath
on a snowy morning.