I love Braided Way magazine–how they explore spiritual practice through essays and poems. And I’m especially delighted they nominated my poem, “On the Last Day of the World” for Best of the Net. Other nominees are Tiffany Lee Brown, Paula Lambert, Joe Cottonwood, Jeff Hardin and Godstime Nwaeze. Thank you to the editors and congratulations to all the other poets.
On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree. ~W. S. Merwin
On the last day of the world, I would want
to feed you. Raspberries. Thin slices of apple.
Peaches so ripe they drip down our chins,
down our necks. I would want to sit with you
beneath a tree, no we’ll climb a tree, no
we’ll plant a tree, yes all of these. On the last
day of the world, I want to give myself permission
to feel exactly what I feel, to be exactly who I am,
to shed every layer of should and meet you
that way. Knowing we have only hours left,
could we put down our arguments with ourselves
and each other and find no energy to pick them up again?
On that day, I want us to write the last poem
together and let the writing undo us, let it teach us
how to get out of the way, how to obey what emerges.
Let’s run outside, no matter the weather, and praise
the light till the light is gone, and then praise the dark.