Featured Poem: The Gathering

By Audrey McHugh
Long Island Branch

 

Gather the children before the breaking dawn

transfigures the sweetness of their youth

and the lost laboring world, unsatisfied,

brings their beauty to its knees.

Gather the hands of generous giving

from open palms, forever

making a feast of hunger, never wanting

in those whose love is daily said in psalms.

Gather the echoes of frustrated voices

dimmed by the brassy world’s sound and fury,

forged in suffering, seeding their heart’s desire

in pastures plowed wide and deep in dreams.

Gather them all, the foreign, forsaken,

into an Arc flowing in milk and honey

launched on the Sea of Tranquility

lapping at the shores of every land,

Where once in life they stooped to conquer

Rising became their morning star.

 

12 comments

  1. Lori Joseph says:

    Audrey you’ve gifted us a beautiful poem! Thank you and Happy New Year to you.

    As a fellow poet, I wonder if you entertained cutting the last line (Rising became their morning star)and instead end the poem with – Where once in life they stooped to conquer.

    Happy Writing!

  2. Claire A. Massey says:

    What a hopeful and beautiful image is the Arc, flowing with milk and honey.
    Thank you, Audrey, for sharing this exquisitely crafted poem.

    Claire Massey
    NLAPW Poetry Editor

    • audrey says:

      Hi Claire, I sent you my address if you would like to exchange a few books each .
      Happy New Year ! Audrey

  3. This is the best I’ve read in 2022: a wow of heart and simplicity and hope. Please send me (fiction and non fiction editor) some prose of yours, if you write prose too.
    And tell us all where we can read more if your poetry. Thank you.

    • Audrey mchugh says:

      So much of writing today is narcissistic, we should start the New Year on an upbeat note.
      Thank you Carol.

Comments are closed.