Two Poems

Consider the Lilies 

 i. 

Between the regions of anticipation and 
participation the heart keeps vigil for what 
all hearts wait for: 

   justice to take form, 
     the return of the beloved, 
         experience to meet language, 

 for reconciliation we do not yet have
   words for, a modicum of wholeness,
      like the consonant tone of a circle closing. 

 And from these flushed desires 
flood the rivers and psalms of how long? 

 ii. 

Below the seal of snow, the glacier lily
remembers itself, the sway of a head-heavy choir. 
In the reverberant belly of the earth, the bulb 
hums what green has always meant. 

 Come spring, its imagination is ripe, 
which is to say, it bears in its body 
the unabridged distance between what is
and what could be.

 Does this audacious feat not command our attention?  
Among the deep drifts of ambiguity, yet lily hopes.   

iii.

This is a formidable beauty: 

 Emergence is not necessarily whole and all at once. 
   Living things arrive by accumulated growth 
      in the warp and weft of light. 

 Be kind with all that is nonlinear, most especially 
   the sacred verbs: to heal, to awaken,
      to know, to love, to become.  

 Our waiting is not a singularity. Can you sense it?  
It has happened, will happen, is happening.


Genesis in the Anthropocene

A poem in elimination

The earth was    
the    let there be, 
the light    
and the darkness. 

Let     be 
     the dome sky. 
Let      be     the     land 
and the waters,  
that     gathered      good. 



Let      every kind     tree 
bear       the seed in it. 
Let     signs     give    
greater light. 

Let     swarms. 
Let      fish     wild.  
Let birds fly.   Let     the earth    
ground         every    good. 

And God said,    See 
   the face of all the earth, 
everything that has the breath of life, 
every green     good     multitude 
hallowed      in creation. 

In the beginning,
the whole face of the ground 
    breathed,
became a living being, 
    every tree     the tree of life. 

A river flows. 
    Keep it         free, 
for      man     caused a deep sleep
made     bones cling
naked and     ashamed. 


Brittany Deininger

Brittany Deininger is a poet and theologian who holds a BA in Creative Writing from The College of Idaho and an MA in Theology and Culture from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology where she works as an Assistant Instructor. Her academic work and poetry pursue themes of memory, lament, spirituality, embodiment, trauma and healing that center in traditions of feminist and ecotheology. Her work has appeared in On Being and other blogs. She makes her home in the Pacific Northwest.

Instagram: @brittany.deininger

https://www.gatherings.ink/
Previous
Previous

On Adoration: An Interview with Joyelle McSweeney

Next
Next

Destinations and Directions to Two Worlds