A broken tulip

Let me learn by paradox…that the valley is the place of vision. (Valley of Vision, xv)

When my professor commissioned us to write a “psalm from below”, I took the assignment out onto cold Chicago sidewalks. I paced the same squares for weeks, turning these words over and over in my mind. This poem was my first after years of writing no poetry. After reading it out loud (shaking in my seat), my classmates told me, “you’re a poet.” Those words gave me courage for an ongoing journey into poetry ever since.

In Lingala, a trade language of Congo, “Kotuta” is the word for pounding food in a mortar carved from a huge log. Almost every dish people eat daily in our town is prepared in the liboka, the mortar. There is a phrase used for the Word of God, “etuti motema na ngai,” literally meaning, “it pounded my heart”. I was startled to visualize the truth of God hurtling towards a heart and crashing into it. That image birthed this idea, of the terror and security of God coming together when I am in His liboka, His mortar.

  My mother ate from a tree, and I did too – 
 Now the tree of life is upon me, 
 Falling heavy. 
 Like the smooth edge of a log.
 Again and again like the refrain of an old song, 
 Like the pounding of waves, 
 Like the ceaseless rotations of the earth,
 Over and over again, You fall on me. 
  
 The hand of my God is heavy, 
 The bosom of my God is hard. 
 All my shells, the husks I hid in, 
 All I thought I was or could be,
 Are crushed in this Tree. 
  
 This is the home of those Mary’s I hear told of – 
 Her of the stabbed heart, her of the shattered alabaster. 
 Mary is Mara – bitter. 
 When the Sons of Israel wept salt tears over soured water, 
 A tree made it sweet.
 Bitter. Shards. Stabs. 
 Now the sweet tree comes like a blow.  
 I am Mary. I am dust. He makes me dust. 

 I know
 Terror is His tenderness, the crushing His compassion, 
 And the tree is Moses – 
 Pulverizing my calf of gold. 
 The tree is Josiah – 
 Grinding my Asherim. 

 I know
 In this mortar I am Mary,
 To scent the wind with perfume, to birth salvation.
 A stabbed heart can bear Messiah, 
 A shattered jar can bathe Him. 
 I am in the tree, of the tree, for the tree. 
  
 I see
 The alabaster and the Asherim 
 The precious and the putrid 
 Strewed to the walls, to the wind
 All that I am flying out like the star dust of a galaxy.
 But --- His palm hedges universes, 
 And nothing 
 Will elude the round, smooth walls of this tree. 
  
 Nothing escapes Christ. 
 He is above me, like a hammer. 
 Nothing escapes Christ. 
 He is before and behind and below – 
 Arms of love and restraint, 
 A living Tree, faithful and constant and true. 
  
 I know
 It is rest and it is rootedness, 
 It is sorrow and it is sweetness
 To remain in this tree. 

 He carries me and crushes me. 
 He breaks me and bears me. 
 He satisfies me and shatters me. 
 The weeping and the wood merge,     
 Fragmented worlds meet sweetened wells, 

 and this is true 
 This Mary, this mortal, finds mercy in the mortar. 
  
 I am dust. 
 My God creates men from dust.