Sabbath Poem (Bozarth)
July 5, 2007
The small plot of ground
by Alla Renee Bozarth
The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected
to stay forever
the same.
Earth changes,
and home becomes different
places.
You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one place.
To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more
You have stars in your bones
and oceans
in blood.
You have opposing
terrain in each eye
you belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.
* from Earth Prayers, Edited by Elizabeth Roberts
* We had this book when I was growing up and I read this poem at a DEC hearing in Farmersville, New York (40 miles from where I grew up) regarding the proposed largest landfill in the Northeast. That hearing happened in March 1994. The has fight continued for more than ten years and now the dump is all but defeated!
* I saw this poem quoted today and googled the author, only to realize that she is an Episcopal priest who was part of the Philadelphia Eleven, the first crop of women “irregularly” ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1974, inlcuding Carter Hayard and Jeanette Piccard, whom we discussed at Transmission last night.