Poetry by Susan Lince
631 W Bayfield Street Washburn, WI 54891
(952) 923-5222
Stones Crying
As an adult, my sense of the spiritual has been nature-loving and Earth-based, reinforced by some of the beliefs of Native American spirituality and by Buddhism. Introduction to these forms of appreciating the sacredness of life in a broader, less dogmatic way, took me away from the traditional Protestantism in which I was raised for decades.
My reconnection with a loving, thinking, and progressive Protestant congregation, in which a range of spiritual beliefs are not only acceptable but welcome, has encouraged me to explore my evolving sense of the spiritual. This association has also introduced me recently to Celtic Christianity. Now my pantheistic side has been given full permission to integrate my ”pagan” beliefs into a more traditional Christian framework; at the same time also it has reintroduced some of the real meaning of the Christian message at its best. The new church affiliation also brings back some buried memories of my childhood Bible training. In this church the Bible is used thoughtfully, —as poetry, metaphor, and powerful narrative—so my appreciation has been drawn in a new way to the power of some of its passages. A hymn brought one of these passages, “every stone shall cry”, to my attention. Its Old Testament source is from the book of Habakkuk the prophet (Hab. 2:10-12), who decries injustice, saying that “the stone will cry out from the wall” of he who ”gets evil gain for his house”… “by cutting off many people”. In the new Testament, Jesus calls to mind this text to rebuke some of the Pharisees, who do not like the noisy activism of the Disciples who are calling for peace and for the glory of an alternative authority, God. Jesus says: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out”. So, just as I have understood for a long time, here stones have the awareness and wisdom to witness injustice and then to cry out about it.
As the series of my paintings on the theme of stones crying about injustice (some with accompanying poetry) show here, this idea has stimulated poems and abstract paintings for me at this time in our history when we know too much to look the other way in the face of injustice to people, other living things, and our planet. I have included actual stones in the paintings, glued with superglue that conveniently drips and weeps. The stones are from many locations, and are usually ones that have made me pay attention to them for their color, shape, or pattern. My painting and poem, “Dust then Dust” speaks about how I hope to be someday as wise as the stones.
Every Stone Shall Cry
Mother Earth Speaks
Dust Then Dust
Each of these painting poems is an interaction with the abstract painting: During the process, the painting would change as the poem developed, and/or the poem changed as the painting developed.
Dust then Dust
Though born from stardust
We dwell wishfully on earth
Thinking we know
How to live a stellar life,
Until weathered and humbled,
We die and crumble.
Then, falling back to the earth,
Whether as ash or soil,
Or sand or grit,
We become a part
Of a deep transformation.
I wish to become
The sparkling grit in the river,
Carried by currents to the place
Where the rocks can tell me
That we are all made from the same stellar dust.
Perhaps then I will understand
What the earth’s stones
Have always known.
November 29, 2014
Every Stone Shall Cry
The stone lies
Near the pile of boulders
In the city park
Watching over the man asleep
In his cardboard shelter
And cries.
And every stone shall cry
The stone cries
Along the roadside
As the bomb explodes
Killing young soldiers
As well as the children nearby.
And every stone shall cry
The stone knows to cry
Even before the excavator
Upheaves the earth
To take away the coal
And leaves only a ragged empty space.
And every stone shall cry.
The ancient stones
Of the wailing wall
Cry as they have cried for centuries
Listening to the prayers
Of the sufferers
And the selfish
The grieving
And the greedy
That reverberate
With echoes of misunderstanding
About who has been left out
Of the Kingdom of God .
And every stone shall cry.
Every stone shall cry
Yet goes unheard
As humankind
With hardening core
Pushes violence
Power
Injustice
And neglect
Rumbling across the world like boulders.
November 30, 2014
Mother Earth Speaks to The Crying Stone
“I held you close to me,
And rocked you for eons.
I wanted your heart to be filled,
And your senses to be alive,
I longed for your inner spirit to be strong,
And your soul to be deep.
But I knew that as you changed through time,
Your steady wisdom would let you know
That my lullaby was not enough
To help you fathom
The carelessness above and around us.
I knew that you would someday cry.
You joined in with all the others,
As every stone cried,
Lamenting the neglect
Of the soil, water, and plants,
The animals and people.
It is time to cry.
If only tears could wash away injustice.”
November 29, 2014
SNOWDANCER
She’s a snow dancer.
She leaps straight-legged
into the air
then noses down swiftly
into the snow,
knowing where to dive
to find that next vole.
And swiveling down with her nose
she pulls it out.
With her mouth,
she tosses it into the air
like a skating partner,
but over and over until it is dead.
Her dance looks more like play
than murder.
She’s a tundra runner.
Vole devoured,
she folds her long limbs in,
and races.
Her strong, sinewy form,
bred for sleddogging,
hides the old history of a broken leg
from a time when, as a puppy ,
she was dropped off a porch
by a dull young child.
She’s in a new life.
She runs in joyful circles
around us,
her rescuers and her housemates,
then stretches out to put some distance
between us.
No real dancing on a leash.
When the walk is over
and we head back
toward the run-down village
that is our temporary home
she gives in
and returns to us,
knowing in her bones
that she is no longer wild and feral,
grateful that we believe
in adopted dogs as family.
No Dog Left Behind.
Good and Emil
(This is about a bright, angry Alaskan Native young man and his troubles when he expressed his disdain toward the school administrator near the end of the school year by writing very public graffiti on a building in his village).
Writing one evening
in the greening
of the season
Emil first erased
his name
(with green)
to make way for a new try
at the power of words.
He lettered
literate insults,
(male to male
high on a wall),
only to see his eloquence
turn into his eviction
from the good thoughts
we ever had about him,
and even from the village.
September 29, 2014
Year of the Warrior Women
Leaving your weapons behind,
You use your caring
Instead of a sword
To draw out
The gifts of others.
You sometimes forget
To ride forth triumphantly,
Holding up your own gifts
Like the trophies they are.
It’s a good time to
Drop the armour,
The shield,
That sometimes
Covers the best in yourself:
Strength,
Perseverance,
Intelligence,
Courage,
The gifts of a warrior woman.
Celebrate yourself.
The Year of Warrior Women has been decreed.
August 29, 2014
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