"You have to work hard to offend Christians. By nature, Christians are the most forgiving, understanding, and thoughtful group of people I've ever dealt with. They never assume the worst. They appreciate the importance of having different perspectives. They're slow to anger, quick to forgive, and almost never make rash judgments or act in anything less than a spirit of total love . . . No, wait--I'm thinking of Labrador retrievers!" David Learn, 1998

Sunday, March 11, 2012

POEM: From the rubble and mud

In the darkness of Dachau
(or it may have been another),
her thin dirty fingers
retrieve a crumb of chewed bread,
shaping it somehow into a petal
no bigger than hope.
Petal by petal
from cramping self-denial
grows rose after rose,
bonsai garden.
Blued with ink,
glued to oval cardboard,
safety pin lashed to its back,
it becomes a brooch.
Kneel in awe:
holocaust jewelery.
I saw it once,
treasured in my mother's palm,
a holy gift.
Alas, it was not
among her things
when she went Home
and the artist's name
went with her.
Yet thus
from the rubble and mud
of Tohoku-Kanto and Fukushima
history will see
just such brilliant
humbling
flashes of life,
courage,
and beauty.
   Jessica Reynolds Shaver Renshaw

Inspired by "The News, March, 2011," on  To Japan, and Our Children with Love by L.L. Barkat, perhaps the first poem to come out of the Japanese tragedy.



From the rubble and mud, posted March 16, 2011.

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