centering prayer

late cold wednesday afternoon
it's lunar new year
my own new year?
circle of friends
shalom
and my restless mind

stained glass is holy?
suns gone down, but sky's alight
stained glass holy?
we are holy
we sanctify this place and space
this time
where am I?

in my past
struggling with my future and
returning to
shalom

then escaping into city streets
the night air
where suddenly my heart
and then my mind
return to stillness

© Leah Chang

song phrases

A whole bunch of phrases from some of the songs that frequently haunt me!

Simply Sung!

Summer in the City!
Who wouldn't love it?
I love your dirty water
Boston, you're my home.
Californian that I am
I've got a line on you, Boston
Way down by the river
Still my home
I love that dirty water
What does it take
To win your love for me?
You already have!
You're still my home,
Boston, my home

Hazy Summer Morning

Here's the fourth of my group of "Images." The freeway and the freedom day can be anywhere and almost everywhere for me.

IMAGES — Hazy Summer Morning

Rainbow haze filling the sky
Early, summer, morning,
on the freeway!
Moving into freedom day
one day apart from typical days
Into a day of freedom
golden mist burning off
afternoon following
later on, night
then just another day, new day
Buildings drift by, here and there
a little desert
a lot of sun
It's not too early now
Only nine A.M.!

©Leah Chang

Malibu East

Because I live in California, I frequently amaze people when I tell them about Malibu Beach in the inner city Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. But it's true, it's real and I love it! "Spirit in the Sky" is a song that was popular more than once. I remember hearing it on more than one "California Dreamin'" Malibu East afternoon. And about the Southeast Expressway—the Big Dig's supposed to be replacing it!

IMAGES — Malibu East

Dreamtime in my special spot
Watching the Southeast Expressway from
Malibu Beach, world apart
within the city
Right now: hot sun, hot sand, cool water!
Late afternoon in the city summer
Getting later,
I'm waiting...
'til the traffic wanes!
What a feeling! Peaceful!
What a day at work! Great day!
And the music on the radio?
Spirit in the Sky!
Gonna recommend you...

©copy; Leah Chang

Morning in Nahant

Nahant is a historical town on Boston's North Shore. Long ago I spent a summer working there as an au pair and on this November night I'm posting this "Image" on my poetry blog. Looks as if I mention the city a whole lot!

IMAGES — Morning in Nahant

Still I feel it!
Eight A.M., a Nahant summer morn
looking out at the beach
from the porch
Cool air, I'm wrapped in a sweater
Fog has settled over the beach
sand and water
sky and rocks but
It'll clear
Today the sun will sparkle down
On a world of expectation!
Later my sweater'll come off
instead into tank top and shorts
then onto the beach
This world's away from the city
I'll be back in the city, but not today
Tomorrow morning once more
I'll look out at the beach
from the porch

©Leah Chang

Summer in the CBD

Everyone who knows me and everyone I know knows I form a one-ness with the city, any city!

Everyone knows the city and I form a unity.

IMAGES — Summer in the CBD

That feel of the CBD!
heat feels good
crowds feel great
Downtown on a summer weekday
Whyever I'm here, I need to return
for the tantalizing skyscape
...or is it skyline?
Glorious flowers
sidewalks sizzling
under my
summer sandals
Making me forever a part of this part
of the city
Just for a while?

©Leah Chang

look back now

Tonight I'm posting this on one of my blogs. I wrote it just about two years ago and what I talk about in these words holds for right now, too.

look back now

look back now
way, far, back now
and dream for the life of you
this is a no-work zone
only for today
look ahead
just a few months ahead
what will you choose?
I'll opt for happiness
I'll ask for heaven
I'll journey there
alone if I must
together if I may
dream for the life of me?
and keep my cool
look back
and now
look ahead
look far ahead


©Leah Chang

Dry Rain

Today in San Diego it's finally, finally raining —in fact it's raining all up and down the California Coast! Although I wrote this a while ago as a mood poem rather than a weather poem, today's so extremely wet it'll work for weather as well...

DRY RAIN

It's a dry rain again
and a dry sleep, too
a half sleep
trying to welcome me

I need a welcoming sleep
a remembering rest

Listen to the stillness

It's still a dry sleep
in a dry rain
a quiet half sleep

I need a wakening sleep
A surprising sleep

©Leah Chang

trilogy

trilogy 1 —fog

country fog on an early summer morning
burnt off by a sunny sky
morning fog settling over the city
misting like a gentle rain
afternoon fog rolling up over the boulevard
into our town from the ocean
we're
walking now on the beach
through a ground fog

© Leah Chang

*****************************************

trilogy 2 — rain

cloudbreak!
remembering places past
a festival of rain on the roof
and on the sidewalks too
sad and sorrowful rain in my heart
it's raining wistful memories
timetouchers touching times past
but morning light still breaks
us
into a day of nostalgia
lunch on main street
endless talk
street puddles
sunshower and
out to the stable to clean the stalls
then up in the organ gallery while the
music of sweelinck rings through all the room
rain is over now
it's night
the sky's full of stars
welcome to your world of dreams

© Leah Chang

******************************************

trilogy 3 — santa ana winds

they're back again unsettling the land
making their powerful presence felt
with dry heat
with fast winds
biking along the beach, free style
wind in my hair, free style
no work today
nothing but play, free style
high dry winds
driving me into paradise

© Leah Chang

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The New South

The South

The New South

The South? It's the one region I easily and inevitably identify with when someone mentions they're been there or lived there. There is anywhere in the South except Texas which to me is more accurately not really real Southwest than Southern South, and except Florida, which any real Southerner knows is a bastard state.

I was born in the Deep South in Mobile, Alabama, lived near Mobile in Bay Minette and Stapleton for a while and then spent some time in Starkville, on the Mississippi Delta.

My mother's father – my grandfather, of course – had grown up in Mississippi: Jackson, I think. He had three brothers and two sisters who all called by their middle names.

All of this means memories and occasionally the present reality of what used to be known as Poor White Folks' Food and is more popularly identified as Soul Food—at least in local White parlance in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The bill of fare would have to include field peas, grits, Mississippi corn bread (1 cup of cornmeal and 1 tablespoon of flour), biscuits, rice, greens, and a pot of bacon grease on top of the stove. I imagine I've got a lot in common with the Blacks I meet and visit with, many of whom have just arrived North. Maybe that's fantasy!

Although recently I've spent very little time in the South: short visits to Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill; Tidewater, Virginia; Louisville, Kentucky; Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville and Gatlinburg, Tennessee—to me Kentucky and Tennessee aren't just border states, they're also borderline South; "Greater Baltimore," Maryland and Washington, D.C. (but is that Southern?), from these visits, from earlier impressions and from the media I've formed a montage. My montage includes regional and local expressions of various kinds being considered vital for sheer survival and also part and parcel of protecting one's Southern identity. Exactly what the identity consists of is not too clear, but it likely includes regional food specialties, and at its worst is politically reactionary and religiously ultraconservative, with an unbiblical view of biblical authority and inerrancy. I suspect – however accurately I'm not sure – the political and religious stance is rooted in a fear of individual risk and responsibility and consequent recourse in legalisms which remove the burden of responsibility from the individual. Though of course there are other reasons, as well as Southerners who think and act otherwise!

And I envision a huge amount of literature, all fiction, all based on reality, all to the last sentence of the last paragraph portraying families held together by hate and dependency, sometimes by incest, with individual and social pathology beyond the wildest fabrications of any non-Southerner. That is just possibly a stereotype?

Also, hot, humid weather and bugs.

Very positively I'm aware of the influence upon mainstream popular music of originally Southern genres such as soul, blues, jazz, gospel, and country and western. Though I don’t know the actual degree of that influence, it appears to be fairly pervasive. To me the music's also a real bridge between South and North..."North" being in reference to the non-Southern United States.

© Leah Chang

Stewed Tomato

Stewed Tomato
Review
(By the way, "Stewed Tomato" was a cool restaurant on Cape Cod.)

Though it's been a couple years since I was there, the Stewed Tomato in Harwich Center is one of my fondest memories and one of the prospective experiences I anticipate with the most yearning and the greatest longing. As a little kid I visited Harwich all the time – my grandparents owned a house with gardens on Church Street near Bay Road, eight furlongs from Pleasant Bay Beach. A few years ago, when I returned to the Cape after some time away, my friend Heather introduced Stewed Tomato and me to each other and I fell in love: in love with the food – especially the breakfasts – and, of course, in love with the matchless ambience! I highly recommend Stewed Tomato for breakfast, lunch, dinner and whenever.

Most recommended: Kitchen Sink Omelet; coffee

Urban Creation Story

I wrote this for an assignment to write a creation saga or myth for a seminary class. As usual, in this one I'm into "The City"!

Before there was space
Before there was time
  There was emptiness, darkness
      and
  people who had a head, a body,
      2 arms and 2 legs
  Who saw they had a need
  They hoped to fill that need
And they cried, "City of Dreams, be ours!"
And they built
  they built
  with brick & wood & stucco & glass &
    concrete & plastic & bronze & steel
  Thus they ordered their space
And they built their
  schools & stores & houses
    shops & offices
    water pipes, sewers & networks for news
    color & sound & motion & mass
And they made light, artificial light

All this was done by the people, yes by the people
  those people who had a head & a body &
  arms & legs but no heart
  yes by the people, we the people
  acting in ordered space
building the City of Dreams
    And then
    those people who had no heart
    saw they had a need
    They hoped to fill their need

Some of them cried, "We’ll take power! We
    promise to end your need!"
And they acted
  By reaching out and taking
    most of the others’ money and pride
    breaking the peoples dreams
    making the rich & the poor
    breaking the promise they made
    to the people
    and setting themselves up high, too high
    in councils, on boards & in
      far-away playlands
    lands far away from the people
    away from the City of Dreams
    the City of Broken
    Dreams
    away from the people who had
    heart
  Who saw they had a need
They wanted to fill their need
And the Spirit answered, cried out

The Spirit cried, "City of Light, be real!"
And the Spirit built
    and with water, fresh water, clear water
    the Spirit covered & drowned
    the people of power who promises broke
    and with water the Spirit covered & washed
    we people of broken dreams
   and gave light of the Sun to our city
The Spirit built
    with hope, with dreams, with
    feasts & festivals, celebrations
    with person to person & group to
      group
    creating a covenant people

All this was done for the people, yes for the people
    we people who have a head & a body &
    arms & legs
  we people who have a heart
  we people who live in ordered space, who
    live in historical time
  in the City of Light
And we sing to the Spirit, yes to the Spirit
  the Spirit who gives us water and light
  the Spirit who gives us life
  the Spirit who gave us a heart

© Leah Chang

Lifestyle Ambience

...it's about what it seems to be about...

LIFESTYLE AMBIENCE

Buzz. Statement of Mission: No mission.
It’s the year of the goose.
It’s the year of the one-of-a-kind love affair.
Or is it? I wonder.
Early morning breakfasts: Guess who’s coming to
Breakfast.
IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE
Sunstream. A slow sunstream on an early
morning, on an early
Summer morning.
In the suburb
and in the city with hot steamy sidewalks.
A sundance, a raindance, all in clay animation.

Here’s a Hug

Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight,
Time Passages
Home is Shelter. Where is home?

In my entire time I’ve learned only one thing:
If money is making money, someone is being exploited.
And that’s an important thing to know.

You said you’d give me life, but you never told me about the fire.

© Leah Chang

Totem

stars you inquisitive
animals
shall I tell you the same things
again shall I tell you all the places
I went when I had nowhere to go
shall I draw you a map

while it is still night
with morning around the edges
I will take the face of dawn
in my hands and say it

surely if I can tell anyone
I can tell her
that I have found
the gods and discovered
I am not one of them

if I must have
faith in something
it might as well be the desert
as the river it might as well be
today as tomorrow my fingers
as my teeth it might
as well be despair

all I can do for the moth
is light the candle
all I can do for the forgotten
is forget

—RICHARD SHELTON—

Indigo Summer

...my favorite season and a yearning mood...

Indigo Summer

Suburban scene, Glenellen Drive
Soft morning sounds, dusky rose following a
nightlong rain
Colors as soft as this new July day
slowly sneaking into a world still indigo quiet
Breakfast on the deck
with earth dry tan under the deck
dry earth beneath the heavily rainladen leaves of the trees

Lunch at the restaurant at the mall at the end of
Main Street, way cool blue
Bright colors in the windows of the
house at the end of the street at the
rim of the park
yellow and cranberry, with inner-city edge!
Now seen: clear skies and hot sun

And felt: humid nights and desperate, yearning
music, restless talk

Scene at the beach
hot sand, sparkling sand
wet sand and breaking waves
The night still desperate, white and hopeless
longing for dawn
while waiting in hope for hope

© Leah Chang

between...

BETWEEN...

Between the silence and the pain
My sorrow and waiting

waiting

as though
hope might be a promise

Between the memory and the feeling
Is there a place for us?

For us within my silence
Inside my pain

© Leah Chang

Streetlife

And one about the city...about the SunTree in the city!

STREETLIFE

StreetLife! Sounds like a song!
I live in that song
Central city, inner city
Get on the bus and pay my urban fare...
ride around urbania.

Back on the city streets
catch those smells
frying food, fragrant planted posies
whiff of truck exhaust
catch the signs
Sushi Special 4 NEW TIRES $100
signs and...the SunTree!

SunTree! say the word again: SunTree!
and again: SunTree.
Where? You just can’t believe this one
You didn't answer--WHERE?
right THERE--in the Financial District!
orange and yellow. It's all mine.
What? Mine. Claimed it the day it first transfixed
me
Now it's transformed me.

So today I'm hangin' out high on my urban turf!
Hangin' out street easy on these city streets
Left the rest of the world behind.
Gotta get a Szechuan beef with rice,
city taste.
Vanilla ice cream, city flavor...
and then...
Cloudburst! Sunshower!

StreetLife.
Listen to the city.
Home of the middle person, middle class
home of the people, yes the people
watch the people, again the people
people with a heart
You'll hear horses, crowd control
but traffic's quiet and sooo slow
traffic jams then the car horns go WILD!

Sky's heavy blue while the Earth's Star
BLAZES into the city,
beyond the city limits
glimmering off glass
overheating the pavement so it
rises up and hits you hot in the face
Hangin' out
On my very own urban turf

Then looking out my window into the street
below
Guys and Girls in Blue cruisin' by
Inline kids bumping and falling over each other
Here's my friend and we're up to the roof.
Freeway whizzing by with its usual whir
Lyin' on the roof to dream with my ghetto box
between us
Dream of tomorrow, out again on our urban turf
Both of us cityborn and urban bred...

© Leah Chang

Truro Morning

This one's about the Cape Cod town of Truro:

Truro Morning!

...new morn again!
jump out of bed
into some clothes
run down the stairs
through the kitchen
onto the deck
spirit through the sand splash
into the water...

© Leah Chang

City Blues and Brights – City Lights

That we can be "City Lights!!!"

CITY BLUES AND BRIGHTS — CITY LIGHTS

It's a morning glow - the kitchen at dawn.
City blues. The kitchen at dawn.
Come on, get up, wake up!
            It's a brand new morning!

Look out the window, look at the sky...
Watch the stars fade
            the night stars
             lights of night fade
          take some stars into your heart
Quick! Look up in the sky – look quickly.
          quietly, softly, look
            while still there's time
Circle some stars circle some stars
          to bring them into your heart

You're up, you're awake. You’re ready
You're ready, you're alive
          It's a brand new morning!
          It's a beautiful morning!
Hold onto the morning, day is breaking
        night is over
This is the sunshine place
It's a city bright

Take that heartful of stars you've
          borrowed from the sky
there's a basket over there
          set some of those stars
            into that basket
You'll need them in the darkness of your night.

Day's breaking
Day's broken all over the city
City blues     the city at dawn

Sit and savor the sunrise
            savor the day
bask in and savor the kitchen at daybreak
Watch that basket of stars
          guard that basketful of stars
Are the stars still in your heart?
          Delight in them    Hold them dear
          And share them
            Share them...

City blues, urban blues that is.
Sun's up     Morning's here

Morning's ready! There's a city out there
A big city out there A Great City
          get on out there and scratch for
            life
          hold on, hold on
      hold on.     Don’t let go.
Keep those stars in your heart
          and give all of them away.
There’s lots more where those came from.
This city will be a sunshine place.

Day's done, it's end o'day
Watch those stars in your heart,
            in that basket
Morning's over, so's afternoon
          it's evening now
            night's closing in...

It's sundown. Night's right at hand
Watch those stars in that basket,
            on that table
Watch them closely
          night's...almost...here

What promise will you offer the night?
What answer will you give to the night?
Night has dawned upon all of us
Night's here now
Now is the season of night
          sleep

You made a covenant with the day
The stars you show are its sign
Will your covenant enfold the night
            as well?

It's night now, darkness time
Stars in the basket on the table
Stars in your heart
          In your heart       Sleep quietly
            ...now...
Morning's on the way


© Leah Chang

new blog!

Hi Friends! Here's my new blog! Maybe you've visited my other blog, "Desert Spirit's Fire Alive," the one I began for my theology. I decided to move all my poetry over here and I'll also be posting some other thoughts, feelings and related.