This post kicks off the poem shares from my new book, Away, with the title poem from the first section. The first section of the book holds anger and lamentation. The COVID-19 pandemic was earth-shattering for all of us. For me, as a person with weakened immunity due to medication I take for chronic illness, I was not prepared for the way it would feel to have my long-term health in the hands of others.
It gave me a small taste of what it might be like for Black, indigenous, and other people of color in the realities of systemic racism, for people living below the poverty line or fleeing the effects of violence and climate change at our borders, for people in the LGBTQ community – for all outsiders. Sadly, it took something personal for me to really feel the incredible and frightening weight of our connections with one another and the ways in which the actions and silences of those with social or economic power cause or allow suffering in the lives of those without it.
I entered a spiritual desert that would call reality into question and change everything for me. As a follower of Christ, I find Jesus in the Gospels time and again in radical solidarity with every kind of outsider. I found that Jesus in people on the margins of society. I began to listen more intentionally to their voices. I found God too in the natural world, as I always have, but in a deeper way. I spent a great deal of time listening for the truth about God and love, which had fallen out from under me, in the sound of the wind in the trees.
I began to hear how place and time fit into forever. How death is always everywhere, and life is always everywhere. How love, more than a feeling or an idea, is a state of being that strives for justice and protects the vulnerable. I saw the way the trees seem to suffer and thrive simultaneously. From the wind in the trees came “Away.”
Away
I listen all day to the wind
in the trees.
It rustles in the sycamores,
shimmers in the cottonwoods,
flutters in the maples,
twirls in the oaks.
Sometimes it is casual;
sometimes in a hurry.
Sometimes it hides
behind the birds and the crickets.
Sometimes it prevails
over all other sounds.
It is deep, full,
constant.
The longer I listen,
the more it becomes –
yes, wind,
but also, somehow,
the sound of all
that is necessary.
To learn more about Away or to order, please visit
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