Thursday, December 07, 2023

MEDITATION ON FEAR AND LOVE

by Heather H. Thomas


“Reflected Autumn Light 2 Photograph” by Catherine Lottes



If I say I love god and hate my brother, I must be a liar.

 

Roots protrude over knots of weeds 

and wildflowers overgrowing the path 

 

to the old bench: knife scars. Initials dotted 

with bird shit. Today the ceasefire ended. 

 

Bombs resumed falling on crowded hospitals 

where the attacker says the enemy hides 

 

command centers that must be destroyed. 

The water’s green-black gloss. 

 

Slanted sun flares across it, flashes onto trees. 

Angled, the sun doubles its reflection, blinding me. 

 

For a second my face turns up to the sky 

glaring down. If I cannot love my brother

 

whom I have seen, how can I love god whom I 

have not seen? Quickly I turn away. 


My eyes burn. Behind them the sun repeats 

on my eyelids, retina, optic nerve. 

 

The riverbank is bathed in golden shimmers, 

shaking the leaves, making old branches dance.  

 

Pockets of air vibrate without breeze or wind, 

shaking me. Shifting reflections fracture into 

 

prisms of light flowing far away to the rubble, 

the dead, the injured, the taken, shaking every 

 

stripped-open heart that’s part of it all, the pulsing

downstream, the cross-stream ripple, the light 

 

refracted in this instant, as if the river upended 

and we were all under water. 



Heather H. Thomas is the author of Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press, 2018), and six other poetry collections. Her work has won awards from the Joy Harjo Prize, the Rita Dove Prize, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. Barrow Street; Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts; Pedestal Magazine; and The Wallace Stevens Journal have published her recent work. Widely anthologized, Heather's poems are translated into six languages, including Arabic. She lives along the Schuylkill River in Reading, Pennsylvania, and has taught creative writing for many years.