Blessing this complicated life

Alice asked me last week,
“Do you have a poem about trying to help a child
figure out the volume of a prism
while trying to plan worship at the same time?”

I think about my week —
when Earth Day came, I was not
at a climate change event,
Arbor Day and I did not plant a tree.

I bowed my head for Yom Hashoah
as Jewish neighbors
lit virtual candles for names
of those lost in the Holocaust,
and for Armenian Remembrance Day
that it teach the world
genocide must not be forgotten,

On ANZAC day in Australia
and Aotearoa New Zealand —
the courage and losses of world wars
are as fresh as poppies
cut by children in red paper
while people woke at six
to stand in driveways or by mailboxes
in a social distance salute.

Ramadan began, too, in fasting and prayer
with its holy center this year
in homes of the faithful,
while Poetry Month drew to its end
with very few readings
but a snow of verses telling what we feel.

Blessed is this time
when we are connected in deep old ways,
and are so by learning new ways —

to mark the prism and the prayer,
that both bend light into hope.

(For Alice Rauch who inspired this blessing and Rosalie Sugrue who shared her handmade family ANZAC poster … black print says “Be grateful that the current world war is not countries uniting to kill but countries uniting to save lives.”)