An old poem

I wrote this one a few years ago and rediscovered it tonight.

Birth of a Star

By Emily O'Malley

When a wish takes form

It breaks free and ascends

To the boundless cosmic expanse.

The hopeful seed nestles

Into a cloud

Embryonic

Until it rises from the haze and

Glows

Nourished by moon's milk

In a celestial garden.

The stars hang from their stems,

Waiting to be picked

By those who plant them.

Once Upon a Recession

I wrote this yesterday.

*   *   *

There was an old lady who lived in a shoe
Slung over a telephone wire
With all her expenses and bills overdue,
She could not afford to retire.

Her dear friend Peter Pumpkineater
Had a wife and couldn't feed her.
Residing in a pumpkin shell,
They knew their home would never sell.

Old Mother Hubbard lived down the street
Disabled, she dwelled all alone
Her kitchen cupboard held nothing to eat
And no one would throw her a bone.

In this mass Plutocracy
They had such meager means
Because the aristocracy
Spent gold on magic beans.

The king did teeter dangerously
Atop a great stone wall
He'd built a castle in the sky
So it was doomed to fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not put the economy together again
But Peter, Peter Pumpkineater
The lady in the shoe
And Old Mother Hubbard
Knew exactly what to do.

Apart, they each were small enough
To live in boots or shells
But then they all united
And stormed the citadels.

They occupied the castles
They occupied the gates
The guards all tried to stop them
But it was far too late.

Millions had joined them
Reaching fever pitch
Demanding fairer wages
And taxes for the rich.

It was no easy trial
They had to persevere
The process took a while
They did not yield to fear.

After strife and labor
They won their due reward
Each man and his neighbor
Had lives they could afford.

Peter and his lovely wife
Moved from their pumpkin shell
To an urban condo
Where they fared quite well.

The little old lady who lived in a shoe
Finally retired.
And Old Mother Hubbard filled up her cupboard
With all the food she desired.

So if you think you're much too small
To have your rights upheld
Remember those who changed the world
Stood up
And rebelled.

Barriers

A poem I wrote last week.

*   *   *

If only I could freeze my reflection
And step into a mirror,
Watching passively behind protective glass
As traffic whirs by
And the sun hitchhikes on the wind,
While my world stands placid and still.

At night I slip behind the computer screen
Into a glowing dimension of vicarious adventures,
Or
Numb mindless clicking and waiting.
I want to stitch my own words
Onto the technological patchwork
But they boil beneath my surface,
Encased by a thick sheet of ice.

I even keep friends enclosed
In glossy mental snapshots
Afraid to dial their numbers
Lest I disturb the frames.

Instead, I nestle into my old chrysalis.
Last time, I'd hoped to emerge with vibrant wings,
Fluttering from one endeavor to another,
Sampling the nectars of success.
Instead, I became a pale moth
Who haplessly chases flickering lights
And dreams of touching the moon.

I wrap myself tightly in this cocoon,
In stasis until the sun
Peeks through my layers
Once again.

Faith and Reason: A Crucial Balance (Part 3)

Reasons for my beliefs, and why I continue to have faith in spite of my doubts.

*     *     *    

            In light of my plethora of doubts concerning Biblical inerrancy, you probably wonder how I can still call myself a Christian. After reading this, you may not consider me to be one. Please understand that I used to be more skeptical than this. Coming to believe any part of the Bible at all was a seismic shift for me. I consider myself Christian for these reasons: I believe that Jesus is the messiah. I believe He is divine, and He is our savior. I strive to follow His laws, and I answer to Him. As Jesus is both human and divine, I think the Bible is both divine and human. We are creations of God, but we pale in comparison to Him. In the same way, how could the Bible be equal to God? How can a book translated by human scribes hold a candle up to our creator?

            I’ve had a lot of experiences that revealed the supernatural to me. I shared some of them in “Reasons to Believe,” but there are more. A certain one was particularly jarring and unpleasant. When I was fifteen years old, I experimented with a Ouija board. A member of my family also became deeply involved with it, and we used it together. We were obsessed for about a week. We spent hours asking it questions. She carried it around with her. At one point I asked a spirit to “give us a sign” of its presence. Immediately, the light switched off. There was a tray of Snapple in the room, and the Snapple started sloshing around inside the bottles. No one was moving the Snapple, and no one was near the light switch. There was no wind, and none of the other lights in the house had turned off. We should have heeded the warning and stopped right away, but it wasn’t enough for us. We were curious and excited about the encounter, and wanted to see more. Later that week, the apparition of a face surfaced on my relative’s fingertip. It appeared suddenly and wouldn’t wash off no matter how hard she scrubbed it. The face was tiny, with a menacing sneer. It was the most disturbing thing I had ever seen. She showed it to my mom, who thought it had been drawn on her finger. However, the image was far too small and intricate for her to have drawn. We both saw it appear out of nowhere. She and I burned the Ouija board and I prayed for God to drive the demon away. Afterwards, the face finally vanished from her skin. It left us both very shaken, and neither of us ever touched a Ouija board again.

            I know that sounds quite far-fetched, and many of you will write it off. In fact, some of you might decide I’m completely insane and disregard anything I say from now on. It’s okay; you’re not obligated to believe me. I won’t expect you to believe it if you’ve never had a similar experience. I can only affirm that I witnessed this event, and that the other girl involved will verify it if you ask her. I don’t have a history of seeing or hearing unusual things. This was pretty much an isolated incident, and a few other people in my family saw the face as well. They tried to assign a natural explanation, as did I. I researched shared hallucinations and learned that if two people are psychotic or under the influence of certain drugs, they can influence each others' hallucinations by discussing them. The hallucinations are never identical, though. People can share delusions, but these differ from hallucinations. Delusions don't actually cause you to see things. She and I didn't discuss the apparition, though. We saw it, and neither of us have a history of psychosis. We both know what really happened. I learned not to meddle with occult games. There is a certain thrill to them, because they feel as if you are sneaking into the spiritual realm instead of knocking on the door and asking to be invited in. Regardless, the consequences are not worth the excitement.

         Aside from that episode, I’ve read and heard many stories that further confirmed my belief in the supernatural. I learned of a phenomenon in which identical twins feel pain when the other is injured or in danger, even if their twin is far away. I spoke to a woman who told me about a time in which she felt a sudden urge to take a new route home, and it turned out that she narrowly escaped a car accident that could have killed her. Numerous people report sightings of spectral figures. One of my teachers at the Fairfield Brio told me that her mother had passed away in the bathroom, and my teacher’s son was unaware of it. When he was four years old, he visited his late grandma’s house and his grandfather mentioned her. The child asked, “You mean the lady in the bathroom?”

        Upon reading these accounts, some may acknowledge that these sound supernatural but wonder why I identify with Christianity specifically. A large extent of my faith is rooted in the saga of Aunt Mary.

        After she died, I found a huge collection of her old diaries. I buried myself in them for weeks, hoping to find answers to the mysteries of her life. Soon, I noticed a distinct pattern. Whenever I was reading one of her journals and had a question about her life, I would find the answer on the next page. This happened so many times in a row that there was no way I could call it a coincidence, especially since the questions and answers were so specific. I wondered what she’d wanted to do once she graduated from college, and immediately found an essay she wrote about her wish to become an art teacher. I wondered if she’d written anything about my mother, and then found an entry about her on the next page. I wondered if she’d ever written about me, and found a poem on the following page which was addressed directly to me. She wrote it for me a week after I was born. It was a beautiful heartfelt message about how she was so thrilled to meet me and hoped I would have a wonderful life. At one point I was feeling sad as I read her journal, because she sounded depressed and lonely in so many entries. I wondered if she’d had enough joy in her life, and if I’d helped to make her any happier. I thought I had read all the entries. There was a long series of blank pages. I flipped through the book, and felt as if my fingers were magnetically drawn to a certain page. I didn’t know why, since I assumed it was blank. Amidst the bare sheets there was a page with a single sentence jotted on it. It read, “If I die soon, then everyone will know I had a good life. If I live longer, then everyone will know they helped make it that way.” When I read it, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and my skin prickled. I cried in complete relief and gratitude. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

       There is a lot more to Mary’s story, but the most poignant part came a month later. On September 10th, a month after she died, her friend called my grandmother’s house. A poem had popped up in his head and he didn’t know where it came from, but he knew it was addressed to Mary and felt suddenly compelled to share it with my grandma. This is the poem:

A Shepherd's Voice

For Mary

It is I who heals the memories of yesterday’s pain

Remember, I go where no man can go—in pure light

Yes, I, Lord of it all.

You will not travel through this darkness alone.

You’re my creation

Wherever you go, I will follow.

My lovelight, bear it bright!

Night and day, day and night.

We are partners in rhythm, partners in grace

Lock into Me, moving, a fiery embrace

We will each take turns whispering,

“Let me lead,” “Follow me,” “Love Me,”

“Walk on.”

            When Mary’s friend wrote this down, he didn’t know she had died.

            I didn’t realize how many Biblical layers are in this poem, but they run deep. First, there’s the reference to the Lord as a shepherd. Then it mentions the realm of pure light (the Father), where only the Son can approach. This tells me that Jesus is addressing her in the poem. I was initially confused by the line “You’re my creation,” but then I learned that Jesus did create the universe along with God. The Bible lists Jesus as a creator, and says that He always existed. God didn’t “make” Him. He did not always exist in human form, but He always existed in spirit.

For my late aunt

Whenever I see a wine bottle with a past year printed on it, I feel as if the year itself is contained within that bottle. If it says 2005, I feel like it's still the year 2005 within the confines of the glass. When the bottle is uncorked, the old year spills out along with the wine and the past converges with the present.

I was reminded of this at my grandparents' house yesterday. My late aunt Mary took a glass-blowing class at college, and she had made some beautiful glass balls. I found one in her old bedroom, and thought of the bubble inside it. It contains air that she once breathed; air from the time in which she formed it. That moment was frozen inside the bubble. The ball contains a moment in which she was alive.

Every few years, I write a poem for Mary. This is the one I wrote today.


Orb

I hold the air you once exhaled
In a glass ball
Crafted with more care than hands could grasp.
The orb embraces your breath.

A drifting bubble held your world,
Popped
But still intact.
The winds spread you out,
Carrying the whisper of your ashes.

You are no longer at the mercy
Of capricious breeze.
You could never be buried in body or spirit.
Your footprints cannot fade.
Ground grows fertile where you walked.
Colors and music bloom in your steps,
Watered by memories.

No element could divide us.
Fire burns away the barrier,
Leaving more ashes in its wake.
My scorching grief is quenched
By the flow of your gentle words.

I write you letters in the sands of time
Messages delivered by tides
Sweeping your words back to me,
Washing away regret.
I swim in our shared inspiration.

A bubble slowly ascends.
It's swayed by neither wind nor waves
Not fragile like your glass,
More steadfast than the earth.
It holds your world
Full as a mind pregnant with ideas.
It rises
A new circle
Endless as your love.