122/365: An Eager Speech

The taxi pulled me
through the early morning dark,
rushing to the plane.
I worked over an eager speech
to wring out my disquiet.



----------------------------

The above poem is based on the Japanese tanka.

121/365: A Resort Far Away

I buy plane tickets
to a resort far away
with palm trees and sun.
It's strange to know I'll be gone,
stranger still that I'll be back.



----------------------------

The above poem is based on the Japanese tanka.

120/365: They Know the Way

Remember your feet.
They move on assuredly.
They know the way there.
They've borne you since your first year,
and bear what you cannot see.



----------------------------

The above poem is based on the Japanese tanka.

119/365: Cleanliness Metronome

The laundry machine
is a mnemonic device
for meditation,
a cleanliness metronome
pulling me into slow breath.



----------------------------

The above poem is based on the Japanese tanka.

118/365: Fantastic Tribulation

My childhood's spiritual education
was delivered through the vocabulary of persecution.

Our people were without nation.
We were one with all who sought asylum from oppression.
Our isolation was the guardian of our spiritual wealth.

The summer camp romance novel
of our Anabaptist fate was seductive,
raised up in a chorus of Negro spirituals
sung by white children who believed
these words of injustice and alienation lived too
in our confessions of mean kids at recess.

We were historically embedded underdogs
play-acting Moses' circular desert trek,
marching ourselves through fields until sweat ran
to become both more Hebrews-compassionate
and hungry enough for lukewarm chili
ladled onto melamine plates.

My child's heart suckled on intemperate tragedy,
savouring the fantastic tribulation of my body in a cage
hung from the steeple of Münster's church,
where the birds could pick clean my sacred bones.