LEGEND OF WHITE BUFFALO CALF WOMAN

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Reported birth of rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone park fulfills Lakota prophecy: “The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning. We must do more,” said Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle… Lakota legend says about 2,000 years ago—when nothing was good, food was running out and bison were disappearing—White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared, presented a bowl pipe and a bundle to a tribal member, taught them how to pray and said that the pipe could be used to bring buffalo to the area for food. As she left, she turned into a white buffalo calf. “And some day when the times are hard again,” Looking Horse said in relating the legend, “I shall return and stand upon the earth as a white buffalo calf, black nose, black eyes, black hooves.” A similar white buffalo calf was born in Wisconsin in 1994 and was named Miracle, he said. —AP, June 14, 2024. More photos by Erin Braaten here at YouTube.

When a bison calf appears white-furred

On a patch of yellow stone prairie 

The People know it is mine   Me:

Dark-haired/Dark-eyed 

When first I came to them   Yes:

Miracle   Yes:

Sacred-birth leucism   Rarest

Of rare   Lakota-blessed prayer   Grass-

Rolled   And a pipe I left   Change

Among the geysers/Great

Change meaning What most excites

Returns   Like hunger   Just totally totally

Floored a woman says in a baseball cap:

White   Holding a camera: a long-range lens

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds would like to acknowledge Nadia Colburn, of Align Your Story, and Tom Daley, both of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for their indispensable writing workshops; Doug Holder, of Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, for his ongoing support; and Susan Richmond, poet and children's book author, who coaxed Ms Reynolds into Plein Air Poetry at Old Frog Pond in Harvard, Massachusetts, a collaboration of poets that lasted ten years and produced as many, beautiful, chapbooks. She is grateful to all.

AFTERMATH

by Dana Yost

“No Mercy” by Mariusz Kozik

It’s turned me 

into a steel blade,

cutting people from my life

without hesitation, without doubt,

just a quick slice and they are gone.

I’m not a heartless man. Rather,

the opposite: forgiving, understanding.

But not this time, not this time.

Some things are too sacred.

The Constitution, for one.

I believe. I defended it

my entire career. If you choose

to denigrate, or violate, or ignore

it, you face the blade that my life

has taken on: it will cut you

out, send you into the outer darkness

of my life where I may never see

you again, never think of you again.

I’m sorry—no, strike that.

I do not apologize. I am steel,

on this, I am steel. And the blade

cuts fast.

Dana Yost was an award-winning daily newspaper journalist for 29 years. Since 2008, Yost has written six books, including last year's poetry chapbook In Your Head.

FOR MATTHEW SHEPARD

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

On October 26, 2018 at 10:00 am Washington National Cathedral hosts a Service of Thanksgiving and Remembrance for Matthew Shepard, whose brutal death in 1998 shocked the world, grieved the Church and mobilized the LGBTQ movement. The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal bishop of Washington, and the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man elected a bishop in The Episcopal Church, will preside. The service is free and open to the public, and passes are not required. Following the public service, the Shepard family will attend private interment service in the Cathedral crypt. Watch live online: https://youtu.be/FSXtHMXuaPI

                                finally 
                                     you will rest
                after the weight of some twenty years
                                     as God’s light scatters color
                through hallowed glass
                  within the cycle of other calendared events
                future festivals will frame your ashes
                liturgy will celebrate each change of season
                morning prayer and even song will hinge the hours . . .
                from now on
                                     how many visitors will walk among the silences
                          and finding your name     will pause to remember your life,
                                    your costly pain
                and death
                with its unanswerable why
                                     yet    under its ashen skin
                                     there still pulses that fragile thing we call hope . . .
                          matthew
                                     today this sacred space welcomes you home

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News as well as in the anthologies The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Last year she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published by Press 53 in 2015.

A SACRED RITE: WHEN ATHLETES KNEEL

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

                                it could have been genuflections in a church
                                but there was no stained glass    no pews
                                yet they knelt in a presence greater themselves
                                a silence    a sanctuary    on a field  
                               now a battle wages using words that pelt like stones
                                that cannot comprehend
this sacred moment   this most protected of all rights
                                to dissent     to kneel    to stand    to risk it all

Sister Lou Ella Hickman has been an all-level teacher and a librarian. Presently she is a freelance writer and a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been widely published in numerous magazines. One of her poems was published in the anthology After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Her first book of poetry she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released in the fall of 2015.

FOODIES ABROAD AND DOWN THE STREET

by Lee Ann Pingel

Image source: China Highlights

            On Calvin Trillin’s “Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?”
            Published in The New Yorker, April 4, 2016


Maybe “province bagging” is a thing, foodies
like tourists collecting cathedrals.
No wonder the ancient countries
and their children
take offense at our forgetting
these places are sacred,
these dishes are mothers.
May we all—all, no matter
our birth, our skin, our standing—
remember to open our souls,
let them expand with each site or bite.
Let us be pilgrims,
let us repent of devouring,
learn to savor.

Lee Ann Pingel has lived in Athens, Georgia, since 1994 and works as a freelance editor and writer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from UC San Diego and holds graduate degrees in political science and religion from the University of Georgia. Her work has been published in the anthologies Motif 2: Come What May from Motes Books and Crossing Lines from Main Street Rag, as well as in The Fib Review, Plainsongs, TheNewVerse.News, Contemporary Haibun Online, and other journals.