Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week we feature WNIJ Perspective contributor Rick Brooks.
Brooks is a retired outreach program manager. He worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He now lives in Princeton, Illinois and is a graduate of Beloit College.
This poem “This Moment We Are” was first presented at a "family gathering" of an entire village in the island country of Sri Lanka. Brooks says they had spent three days building a road to their rice fields. After hearing hundreds of children, young people and adults singing together around a bonfire, he asked them all to hum with him, which they did. Once he began reciting the poem, he had to pause after each phrase so it could be translated from English to Sinhala, which was a gift he had not anticipated.
This
is the sound of life.
You are my daughters and sons
my father's voice
You are my mother's heart
my brothers' laugh
my sisters' song
the child's crying.
This
is the taste of life
the sweetness of the fruit
and the bitterness
the pure water
the aroma and flavors
of the universe
This
is the touch of life.
Our father's shoulders
a mother's arms
a neighbor's hands
a friend's embrace.
This
is our thirst for life.
The lotus reaches for the light
The child wakes up and smiles
A village shares its hope
A mother brings her newborn to life.
This
is the welcome to the day
the dance of life
that baby's steps
the woman's long walk
to the well.
These
are the messages of life.
(Now hum again with me)
This
was and will be
the blood of our hearts
our bodies, weary from common labor
but stronger because of
the never ending gift.
This
sound; your voices
we share
This
food and these memories
and this communion
that all might know
we are not in
This
alone.
--Rick Brooks, at Bopagama, Sri Lanka
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
