a prayer for release

I have been reading on Alice Walker’s newest collection of poetry, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing. I felt that with a title like that I could not pass it up. The poems are minimal but hearty with honesty that doesn’t make you work at them but rather sits back with you quietly and says, “yeah, I’ve been there too, and it was like that.”

Here is a piece of one (Word Has Reached Me) that’s been circling my brain like a prayer. She wrote it about the death of an estranged family member, I think, but I feel its words in other ways, too.

 

Let go, let go

into the soothing river

channel

I said to you

& you

looked

as though

you were considering

it.

. . .

Let go. Off into the river

channel. Let go.

All is well.

The love we shared as children

is not lost, though we have been.

Let go.

Let go.

Let go.