This Gracious Planet

Try to align yourself
with the brilliance of the morning.
Take in the new green leaves
and delve deeply into this day.

Say your own kind of prayer
every morning
to the life force
that animates this gracious planet—
to beauty,
to freshness.

This languid morning,
with its blown-about wind-chimes,
will never come your way again.

So savor the sunlight,
dappling trees,
and let cool breezes wash you clean—

glory in being on this side
of the sod.

*

Another Woman Down

Another woman down—
another Jewish woman—
the second in as many days—
this one with my same rare cancer subtype—
damn.

I ate an edible
to help quell the panic
rising from my tender gut
like bile.

“It’s like a slasher movie,”
I tell my husband,
with ovarian cancer
the killer.

Another woman down—
who not long ago
was vibrant and alive.

* 

Watching Animal Rescue Videos Has Become My Bag

Vicariously,
I’m the tiny, pink pig
fallen through the slates of the slaughterhouse-bound truck,
nursed back to life
by a loving young couple;

I’m the abused dog, the donkey,
the impossibly small baby bird
miraculously healed
through great love and care.

I’m the whole world right now,
bombed, massacred, waiting for cease-fire,
waiting for spring,
for the grass to grow back.

Enraptured by the universe, the dog’s heavy sigh,
I lay abed,
dying while hoping.

Despite everything,
I like it right here.

*

The Lady in the Wicker Basket

I will be buried
in the Garden of Faith
at the Gardens of Gethsemane,

buried in a wicker casket
under a lush green field,
in a green burial—
and to the soil I’ll go,
rich and loamy,
feeding the trees I love.

I’ll snuggle up to the earth—
fleet deer and foxes will amble over me.

I don’t believe in heaven,
while my neighbors seem to,
but I do believe in the cosmos—
that maybe I’ll be out there.

And my words—
I’ll leave them behind, too.
Little brightly colored shards,
breadcrumbs.

*

Once a nonprofit grant writer by trade, Karen Friedland had poems published in the Lily Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Constellations, and others. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her books include Places That Are Gone, Tales from the Teacup Palace, and a posthumous third volume to be published in 2024. Karen lived in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with her husband, two dogs and a cat. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2021, two days before her 58th birthday, and died on April 14, 2024.

*

Please note: Karen was a previous contributor to ONE ART. Her poem, The Boy, appeared in ONE ART on March 15, 2023.