This Year

The beauty outside my back door,
reminding me that spring allergies
aren't the end of the world.

Catching up over coffee with a friend this afternoon, I was suddenly struck by just how rapidly the end of the academic year is approaching.  Feeling a wee bit dazed by the realization, I decided the only logical response would be to write a poem, an ode to the insanity and wonder that has been this year.  I realize that this poem is a little odd/ disjointed, but it was either this or the sassy ditty I wrote last night about the woes of exegetical paper-writing, so here we are:

This year

            I’ve eaten bananas and rice and hot sauce

                        all mushed up together in the palm of my hand

            With a woman and her three year-old son

                        Who fled from their home in Somalia mere months ago.

            She is my friend, my peer, at the age of 24.

            She is also my senior, having lived in the charred side of life that I

                         have only glimpsed in passing.

This year I have travelled.

            Travelled East to my family in Senegal, where I was reminded of my roots,

                        of the gift of an identity planted betwixt and between.

            Travelled South to Stewart Detention Center, where

                        I witnessed the underbelly of American hospitality:

                                    “Welcome, worn and weary.  Have a jumpsuit. 

Here’s your prison-in-disguise.”

            Travelled West (and South) to the Border, where I stood in the shadow

                        of the Wall made by humans.  The Wall which deceptively whispers,

                                    “Your neighbors live only on my northern side,”

                        Yet across which life and love continues to flow in both directions.

            Travelled North (or North-ish) to Nashville,

                        where I tried my hands—and my feet— at liturgical dance.

                        Do you hear me, God, when I speak to you this way?

                        When I turn in the wrong direction and forget the next three steps?

                                       Yes, God says, I think.

This year I have written and read,

            painted and created, listened and learned

                        things of great beauty and despair.

            I have been befriended and encouraged

                        challenged to new heights

                                       and given to in great abundance.

This year

            I have gone crazy

                        with laughter and tears and joy.

            Filled to the brim with the muchness of it all,

                        bursting at the seams till there was nothing to do but twirl.

This year I…

            No, not I.  Too much “I” for a year transformed

                        by others and the Divine Other too

                        who all made this year so rich, so full.

            Thank you.  Thank you.

                         For 

                                       This year.