Praise Song, December 31, 2018

I’m not actually convinced this poem lands the way I want it to.  It’s complicated.  I’m not going to explain it, because that feels a little like explaining a joke (in that it ruins it, not that the poem is funny/has a punchline).

Oy vey.

Anyway. I’m just going to do the thing.

Praise Song, December 31, 2018
for Felipe and Jakelin, in hope of a better world 

This is a song of praise.
There is no singing or talk of god, this
is the broken-open praise.
The searching for breath praise,
the looking for a moment-to-still praise,
got-to-pay-my-bills,
grieving-this-world
angry
righteous
passionate praise without object: this
is the gritty praise of living in a world
on fire.

But this is a praise song.
Not for beginnings —
or new years–
or starting over –
tomorrow is sure to be like
the day before and
the month before and
the year before, but
there is meaning made on the eve of the new point.
We stand on the precipice of an artificial re-start:
hearts cracked and breaking, we are
devastated and afraid. Hopeless, angry,
fearful, we are lost and in denial: this
is our country and we, its citizens,
there is no sugar-coating this –

but this is a praise song.
We are living this gorgeous improbability of a world
knowing tomorrow will come and will not comfort us.

So this is our praise song:
we who are not enough.
We who would deny our holy, who have our holy denied,
we divine ourselves.
We consecrate work and sanctify resistance.
We bless the anger that keeps us here.
We firm our feet,
reach our hands to each other and
glory our survival.
We glory the possibility. Personify hope.
We glory our despair as we dance our grief.
We praise our hands, our movement, our breath.
We praise our grounding, our flying, our thinking.
We praise our resisting, our weeping, our not-alone in this
fiery, bitter,
holied
here.