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Sunday, August 25, 2024

KAMALA: A SANSKRIT WORD MEANING LOTUS

by Lana Hechtman Ayers



 

This morning I realized I was feeling something

I hadn’t in a long time,

though the cedar and spruce may not have noticed me,

themselves dancing in the cool late summer breeze,

nor the robins threading the grass with their beaks,

seeking worms, nor the sky the color of humpback

whale milk, or so I’m told, nor the river that listened

to the plucky birds, but the wind, perhaps, intuited,

suddenly glistening as if the air were filled

with thousands of tiny silver glass beads,

and the robins hopped, 

and that feeling I barely recognized, hope, 

hope rose from the back of my throat

like a love song I wanted to croon to no one in particular,

or to everyone, proclaim that all is not lost,

rain is coming, and more sun, and worms are wiggling

in the ground, some not to be found, living on,

and the lotus continues blooming in our pond,

all is not lost, not lost, not lost,

not even the darkness that holds the stars together

in this glorious poem of a shared cosmos we call home.



Lana Hechtman Ayers, managing editor of three small presses, writes over a garage in coastal Oregon where she lives with her husband and several fur babies. Her latest collection of poems, just released from Fernwood press is The Autobiography of Rain