A Calendar of Praise

for multiple voices

To become part of the calendar of praise video project, email calendarofpraise@gmail.com.

In January, Praise
For between the rows of cut corn, gullies of soft snow For on the river high-water ice like lacy skirts engirding the larger rocks For on one bank orchards and on the other fields For Kings dream speech read and heard and in a handful of cities half realized For an unprecedented alignment of Saturn and Uranus For a comet approaching, some seeing or thinking they see through telescopes, through third eyes, a crucifix or an alien ship beside it For those who with seriousness undertake inner work For the rucked and frozen river For noon glare like a bridge across it For the brown bear tramping down it, like a ship growing large, Like a ship or a comet watched from afar Like a dream, like a year, like a leader knowing ice is a path and death is a start New Paltz, New York

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In February, Praise
For the plain black birds who stay For the song of the plain black birds For daffodils, fake or not, on the porch of the yellow house For the bright five o'clock For a gray dog squatted on snow-locked grass For spokes of bootprints out the doors of the junior high For church bells and the quiet after For the boys at hockey, the crack of their sticks on the skidding puck For the hatless gloveless girls watching For under the frozen the unfrozen pond (thinking of it while walking on it) For the sapling bent like an arch For sleeves of bark where the stacked cord stood For oil delivered and gas delivered to accounts past due For kerosene in red plastic containers retrieved For sunlight profligate and uncontained, forever retrieved For sunlight later on the floor of the ward where the son or the daughter mourns For March impendent and the rumored crocus For whatever weather every February (each one minutes longer) day Pittsfield, Massachusetts

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In March, Praise
For road crews unclogging our culverts For chipmunks up from hibernation For under the black mulch of layered leaves, green shoots For seed packets spread like cards across a table For in a shack in Appalcahia a palmful of seeds harvested by hand the year before For on laundrymat bulletin boards the one word "Rototilling" with a number and a reasonable price For magnolias fat braggadocio For cats so obviously happy For the earlier and the later sun For after her last radiation treatment a mother lifting her face to the sun For the run-off roaring beneath our streets For farther away brooks and streams overflowing their banks and farther still the river urging its ice to the sea New Paltz, New York

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In April and May, Praise

For spears of onion scent along the rail-trail path For orange and yellow songbirds passing through from Costa Rica For horses in a field, their comfortable gait For three goats grazing near For sycamores so late to give their leaves, giving their leaves For apple orchards like symphony orchestras on the downbeat beginning to bloom For a wild pear beginning For worms at work in the compost heat For leaves of lettuce up so soon and so soon peas For the grave marker of a winter death finally and carefully placed For the workers of the world revered and remembered comradeship a dream, a destiny not dead For the dead of America's wars revered and remembered freedom a dream, a destiny not dead For in one day dandelions painting a field For the windows of the school bus open For the boredom of school soon over For the prisoners who pray For the lilacs that reach For the river so recently flooded flowing evenly between rich fields For mustard blooms like yellow roads between the orchard rows For the new green of maples. We may not see it again For graduation speakers, those who inspire and those who are brief

For tulip heads eaten by browsing deer For the one head left, the one red flower as after a daughter's sudden death the widow's one daughter left For wild herbs offering their salves For true love For young love flowering and seeing in itself a symbol of all else and seeing in all else a symbol of itself For the celibate man or woman seeing in the self the Source, unsymbolic For the old For the young For the middle-aged laboring and unresentful For resentments released For the energy of Easter and the energy of Passover and the energy of the Spring Equinox For those who are depressed nevertheless loving a breeze, a blade, a hue For those in despair nevertheless choosing another day as the ash tree thought dead springs sparse green in its uppermost crown For the woodsman who in November said No I will not cut it down I will not cut the old ash down. New Paltz, New York

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In June, Praise
For from every gully and level stretch hip-high the lushness leaning . . . chicory weed in Queen Anne's Lace . . . the endless thickly seeded heads of grain For beneath their leaves the wild strawberries dangling (to lean and tongue the softest seems a sexual thing) For between mowings the grasses lifting their seeds upwards on delicate stalks For the black-white soccer ball deflating in a field For the seventeen-year cicadas, their mating noise a torrent litter of their exoskeletons amazing Do we love them less than we love the salmon? For brides as for red-winged blackbirds For blackbirds as for wild asparagus For asparagus as for the last dandelions For the national parks For the current of the rivertaut as plastic-wrap then crimped by rocks For in their scorched grid the orchard trees submitting to Alar, to Malathion, submitting in order to give For in a sudden downpour laughter from the awnings and doorways of Main Street For at dusk trunks and leaves mirrored in the still creek For where the still creek meets the river lovers laughing and deciding For the farmer of a long drought who on network news kneels between the rows of winter wheat to show us what drought has done to the winter wheat For barbecues, for pot-lucks, for the covered-dish For bees with their mouths deep in the sex of the flowers

For ants arousing the peonies, and peonies the ants For the summer solstice For sex of all sorts For on a boulder in the river the conference- or concert-goer comprehending, to the bone, the workshop or the music or the current and its intercourse with stones New Paltz, New York

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In July, Praise
For goldenrod beginning again and loosestrife taking a field For black raspberries ripe and over-ripe For the black dragon fly For the coppery frog and its throbbing throat For the liquid-orange salamander For in the apple orchard a red blush For the fourth of July for having forgotten it to see green fountains in the sky and remember For the Olympics, for symbols violated yet still symbolic the torch and the dove and the rings interlocked For athletes from nations where children are starving saying into the camera Children are starving For the jointed legs of the daddy-long-legs quick over dappled leaves For Sirius so bright before the dawn. Some say it is the sign of Isis, who floods the Nile. Some wake to see it rise For a five-foot high Queen Anne's Lace lifting its intricate white For overhead the heron and the hawk and on an island in the river a sandpiper standing alone then flying off New Paltz, NY

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In August, Praise
For apple crates stacked in the orchards For from the pointed ladders voices Central American songs For the songs of Jamaica, Guatemala and Chiapas For the songs of Mississippi and Georgia (more than Malathion what coats our fruit) For sunflowers bordering the corn For cornfields bordering the river For the Perseus meteor shower For theme parks and water parks and bunjie jumps, that fun For in the cellar of a gutted house mattresses stacked and the daredevil children jumping from the secondno watch the third floor! For the sincere and forthright convention delegate For the African American baby asleep on a lap his destiny to one day accept the nomination of his party And his name shall be peace his harvest forgiveness and America will know again the simplicity of its fields New Paltz, NY and North Philadelphia

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In September, Praise
For a spray painted wordthe word or name Tokay For Betina and Porsha like twins for the first day of school For two boys playing catch and a yellow butterfly passing through For a cobalt blue trash barrel For in the night a car alarm calling "I have been tampered with, I have been tampered with" For the sullen look of a passing youth, for the appeal beneath the sullen look For sneakers dangling by their laces from telephone wire, turning like a wind vane in the wind For sycamores with dignity lining a street For a ginkgo in its bracelet of red brick For a recitation in Spanish from the prophet Jeremiah For the Spanish word Zion, so much gentler than the English Zion For a pigeon grooming itself on a wire, pulling me as ably as did the great blue heron down the groove of tension into immanence For a mother calling Hakim, Hakim For the surf of sound around homes as around homeless shelters around the sullen youth sitting on a cement wall in the dapple of late afternoon, North Philadelphia, early fall North Philadelphia

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In October, Praise
For ash leaves turned that yellow that even on the rainiest days mimes sunlightsunlight through trees For Nareida feeding pigeons polenta from an iron skillet For an orange bow flapping on a brown door For the sun setting red over superstore roofs For the gravel of bottleglass in sidewalk cracksclear, brown and bright green For headlines with a Hubbel photographCollided Galaxies (such collision understood as unexplosive intermingling so great are the distances) For the million woman march and after it behind the counter at McDonald's a teenager flaunting her beaded braids For Christ in labor, Christ in the E.R. untreated For Allah For prayer For the resolve prayer brings For candlelight in the cavern of a Jack-o-lantern sweet smell of pith and seeds For the light in the eyes of the costumed children ninjas, draculas, Disneywomen and witches For the light in the eyes of us all North Philadelphia

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In November and December, Praise

For hummocks of ice down-slope from the culvert pipe For brown and gray through slow November by first snowfall abated For more running water than January will give us or any month until April or March For icicles examined and tossed high to shatter, the shards compared to consciousness, to light, to laughter (the tosser unaccountably happier) For birch trees bright in the four o'clock dusk like dancers posed pulse ecstatic bright in the four o'clock dusk For Venus before dawn on a violet horizon For so soon the strings of colored lights along the eaves of homes with staple guns to doorjambs fixed and by extension cord to reach the very shrubs For alone in a level field the large blue spruce by blue unblinking bulbs sparsely lit For window squares through thin straight saplings seen For the eight days of rededication and the girl or the boy in the temple praying For the human voice alone or in chorus For the winter solstice, and women night-long 'round a fire dancing For the ceremonies of Native America at last reanimant For of all ceremonies those that accelerate worship For worship understood as increase For the instant on waking when Christmas day is recalled For the widow or widower who wakes alone but anyway (or because) recalls For the neighbors who form to say Yes, Build the shelter here For Umoja, Ujima, Kujichagulia and the rest

For the lights of the kenara sparkling on the fresh fruit For under the roadway the river changing course the turbulence and boulders of it from steel bridges glimpsed For the one who kneeling asks to change and does (choice or miracle or both choice and miracle) For the food convoy let through For ancient and modern the hatreds ending (you may say they continue but I say they end) For those of each race who undertake healing For the improbable peace For leafy and crimped the dark green kale in a careful garden yet For the star in the east (supernova or sign or both supernova and sign) For the infant and the mystery incipient For patience For patience understood as faith For faith For three apple trees after freezing rain their branches to the very twigs bulkened and emblazoned scintillate in the breeze (the seer forever after forbearing decoration whose poverty is less for thatis not) For the plumber who Sunday agrees to solder the burst and spraying pipe For outside Port Authority with awkwardness or ease brotherhood expressed For the buck spared and the shot buck hung proudly from the tree of an upstate town For the delicate and cherished ornament from a low branch hung that the grandchild may lie looking up to see his face or hers among packages and tinsel-light intriguingly transformed For expectation greater than can be explained by packages

For resolution greater than can be explained by guilt For charity greater than can be explained by taxes For grace For the turn of the world on its imagined and reliable axis For the gift of beginning again what we failed at before For the gift offered and rejected and offered a second time For the gift accepted For the giver of all gifts For the thoughtful death, attended or not For song For birth For Christ For breath For whatever debt or depression belabors our praise, our pleasureDecember, with light
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About the Calendar of Praise

In February of 1994 I moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts to live with my mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Many days I walked from her house to a small park nearby, winding through the streets of the neighborhood and the fields behind the middle school. One afternoon the low sun swept across the winter landscape and everything my eye fell on seemed luminous. I was filled with gratitude and praise. I began to string together words in my mind, feeling praise for the daffodils, fake or not, on the porch of the yellow house, and many things more. Id add a line and then go back to the start, memorizing as I walked. Indoors, I rushed for a pen and remembered what I could, revising a little for rhythm.

A few years later in March, in New Paltz, New York, the same thing happeneda luminous walk. Over the next eight years, the litany of praise would come to me one or two months a year. When I moved in 1997 to North Philadelphias Badlands, I didnt think any more poems would come. I thought I had to be steeped in nature. But they did come. Everywhere there is beauty worthy of praise. There, with my first September and October in the city I finished the calendar of praise. April and May are combined in one poem, as are November and December. Im not sure why; perhaps spring and the Holiday season are units that span two months or more. Recently, in 2011, a vision came to me in meditation of people reading lines from the months on videotape, to be shared with a world so in need of gratitude and of a spirit of praise for the small, easily overlooked gifts and graces. This is the beginning of that. If youd like to take part, contact me or just send video of yourself reading your favorite month. I hope to begin sharing the praise in late 2012. The lines are meant to be read slowly, with a savoring of the details as you picture (in your own way with your own images) whats being praised. To become part of the calendar of praise video project, email calendarofpraise@gmail.com.