Offered by Marie McGuigan
Welcome to the next Poetry Corner offering. I have chosen a poem I wrote after listening to a Ukrainian professor share his experiences of the current war in his country. This poem was compiled in July 2023 before the current tragedy happening in the Middle East. It has a deeper resonance for me now.
Poem
Longing
by Marie McGuigan
Longing
Hold onto holy hope in this precious life
Dance in the wild foraging, freely, fully
Love, love into joy and strife
Suffering is ordinary, no one escapes this
Repetitious carnage wars, human on human misery,
Hold onto holy hope in this precious life
All the crosses, International, Red, British, Irish
Lights that shines bright in that vast darkness
Love, love into both joy and strife
Words of wisdom, reality, profound suffering and survival;
Spoken through Ukraine professor who's mum died in Mariupol
Hold onto hope in this precious life
Freedom, being free is not an individual construct,
Borders, belonging, a common humanity,
Love, love into both joys and strife
Reflection
While focusing with the poem the sentence “Suffering is ordinary, no one escapes this. Hold onto holy hope in this precious life” I had a sense of something like a vast emptiness with a shadow of darkness. Then I noticed something in me wanting to bring light into it all. I waited taking time to allow, acknowledge the whole sense of it all.
In the third verse “All the crosses.......” the word lights resonated inside. A deep breath came with a sense of space, connecting into something else in me. What emerged was the strength of holding onto holy hope. Like a holy hope in all those working courageously to help our worlds suffering people’s.
Marie Mc Guigan
December 2023
