Poetry & Pema Chodron
“If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility.That’s the true practice of peace.” – Pema Chodron
I am thankful for the parcel that just arrived with this piece of advice. I thought I would share it. Another piece of advice: If one of her books ever appear in your life pay attention to them. I’m yet to meet a person unaffected by her words.
I am standing and eating and laughing again. I think I showed malaria a thing or two. It wasn’t fun. But I’ve earned my stripes. Time is passing quickly. Only five weeks left in this city. Months before I come home, but still. I am only settling, I think sometimes. Although there are other mornings when the regularity of everything seems absurd. The tro tro like a streetcar. The dogs like racoons, sewers like hedges. I even shiver some nights.
I have added new poetry to a subsection of the blog. Go and find her if you’d like some new stories. I am working on at series built from the headlines of Ghanaian tabloids, hence the one titled “Security Officer becomes Turtle”. Enjoy!
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This blessing called rain
This city is always breathing, but in rain
you hear the tepid exhale like a single wind
passing your earlobe.
The skeleton of the bus rattles.
There is music in the clatter of falling.
Hands sweep from open iron,
leather slaps grate.
A man sings psalms down the aisle,
his hands deep in the leather of the book.
He does not slip when we shift westward.
Beneath tin and water, his audience is passive,
humming to their breasts and sipping moisture.
He deepens his breath and breaks louder,
turns to the ear of a young man.
The orange peelers arrive and sell fruit
through the windows. The mother beside me
splits one with two fingers and offers me half.
Even the preacher lowers his book to accept
a quarter. His lips are wet when he resumes singing.
James Town, this brown city, gives more than it can take.
“James Town, this brown city, gives more than it can take.”