I am proud and thankful to be included in a new anthology from Bottom Dog Press entitled COME TOGETHER, IMAGINCE PEACE. The poem is called Savoring The World, and is included side by side with poems from Ellen Bass, Robert Bly, Jane Hirshfield, and many others. You can order the book for $18 from Bottom Dog Press, PO Box 425, Huron, OH 44839, or on-line from Amazon.com. Here's my poem:
Savoring The World
Washington DC, a warm evening in November,
sitting outside the Sultan’s Palace waiting for a gyro,
sipping Almaza beer while the world rolls by,
students from Georgetown & Howard universities
chattering on cell phones, and I have never been so happy
to be alone, listening, open as a gate in this corner chair,
the sensory soup of neighborhood, globe,
anywhere I look seeing what God was aiming at,
the words ordinary, mundane made up later
by those with a short attention span. Look!
at the silver sport utility vehicle gliding by,
windows rolled down, blaring bass syncopating
with the sirens searing down the adjacent block:
could it get any better than this! And the faces
of Arab, African, & Asian so at ease you could almost believe
the Shoe Repair sign across the street:
that anything broken can be mended, here.
And so I listen to the bald man in white shirt,
white slacks, white shoes tell his cell phone
my brother died of AIDS ten years ago, and I’m still grieving.
And how the jaunty-capped black man lights up
with Mother! as his cell phone jingles, flips open,
carries the voice of the one he loves. Listen
to how the world can only be what it is—
invoke the sirens circling now like dogs
to keep at bay the rabid snarl of wanting things
to be other than they are. Like the blond woman
in the crosswalk just now, two Dobermans leashed
& serene: there’s no fathoming what goes on inside,
the political science of hormone & heart begging détente,
a kind of soul you could actually live in.
So when my gyro comes—all tactile & aroma—
every taste bud kneels down, prays
that this pepper mixed with sweet bean,
this flesh of fowl & wheat, be its own sacrament—
savoring the carnal world sacred.
