Poetry

UCC Women’s Celebration XI 
Psalms in Our Own Voices Workshop

Group Psalm of Lament

Creator God, Maker of our Universe,
How long will storms rage? How long will the Earth cry?
How long will fossil fuel companies determine policy?
How long will acid rain fall?
How do we make sense of this all?

O God, help us find the answers,
open our eyes to the devastation that we are causing.
Encourage us to act on what we already know.
Invite us not to argue but to work together
with You and each other.

You made the Earth, and unless You act,
we may destroy Your creation.
Millions of people are hungry because the crops
that feed people are victims to flood and drought.
Those who are most vulnerable and have
the least voice suffer the most.
May the quiet be heard.

Creator God who once formed all that is,
we call on you again. We trust in you now
to right all these wrongs.

Make our hearts open to help in the ways that we can.

 

Found Poem

(lines from phrases in Dorothy Wordsworth’s
Alfoxden Journal)
Streaked by sliver
the sheep mimic
clustering snow-drops
hanging their heads,
the slanting woods
like the columns of a ruin.
The oaks, stripped of
acorn fairy goblets.
Calm blue tongues hum
the sound of the sheep bell.
The moon in a black-blue vault
follows the sheep tracks.

                                          ~  Joyce Ray ©

Feather in the Dogwood

“I am a feather on the breath of God.”
                                         ~Hildegard von Bingen

Adrift among dogwood petals,
glade shadow voices whisper gold
brilliance into the greenwood.
Wings quiver, undulate,
scribe radiant notes that
flow and ebb on blossom cream.

“O mirum admirandum.”

I whirl on sacred breath,
dance, reach, leap, until
crystalline tones
pierce my shaft
pin me
to the dogwood
whose life sap pulsates
my surrender
in a fractured crescendo.

                                          ~  Joyce Ray ©