qarrtsiluni

by Barbara LaMorticella

Let everyone on earth who is alone now
reading, sleeping, sitting in small rooms
alone and meditating,
cutting wood, walking desperately through
dark nights

Let everyone alone and praying
Let everyone alone and grieving
Let everyone alone

Let everyone contained and pure
in solitude know — Know

That in the early morning hours
all the prayers of solitaries
rise vibrating out of the dim earth,
not like birds but like
the deepest voice of earth itself

Rise out of the tangled grasses
of individual living
the way the mist does in the morning —
softly, surely,

Reclaiming and replenishing heaven.

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Barbara LaMorticella lives in the woods outside Portland, Oregon, and hosts a poetry program on KBOO radio. She’s been a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and a recipient of the Stewart Holbrook award for outstanding contribution to Oregon Literary Arts. A retired medical transcriber, she’s performs her work widely and is working on her third collection of poems.