POEM: FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is everywhere.

It’s in the first breath and the last.

It’s in the long sounding of church bells

and in the song of days.

It’s in children’s laughter and summer ponds,

and in paths that wind on forever.

It’s in every breath of every leaf and flower.

Forgiveness fills memory’s rooms with purpose:

It orders things.

And so, in the stone towers

where offerings burn in hot fires,

forgiveness tempers the flames

with clay tablets and baking pots.

Forgiveness is everywhere around us,

now, and in the abiding blue of our world.

Amen

WHEN I PICK A POEM TO POST, I'M OFTEN just trolling around through the papyrus rolls scattered about tombs that I raid, and I gather one up fairly quick, being wary of any ghosts I might stir up. The prayerfulness of this poem caught my attention, as I could use a bit more practice with that rusty skill set of supplication and succour. I also just edited a review of an Andre Norton story that features forgiveness as a central theme. So serendipity and synchronicity (sort of) behove me to bring it to your attention.

It’s not a prayer, really. There isn’t anyone asking for help or favour or intercession. There isn’t any worshiping per se of forgiveness, like a goddess from Greek mythology for example. There is gratitude expressed by the narrator for forgiveness’s presence. The narrator lists where forgiveness is, and it seems to be everywhere. Oddly, there does not seem to be any negative storyline behind forgiveness’s appearance: Presumably, there are many things which need to be forgiven.

Forgiveness seems to be a kind of ‘no-fault comprehensive insurance plan’ that covers just about everyone and everything. It allows everything to be if I can put it that way. It gives freedom free reign, so to speak. It is in every human breath, and in the sound of church bells, (that I take to suggest organized religion), it is ubiquitous throughout the natural world. (Though why what seems like such an obvious human trait be part of the natural world is unclear.) It’s so ever-present that its reason for being there, how it got there in the first place (and got everywhere), seems difficult to understand.

 The speaker says that it “fills memory’s rooms with purpose” and brings order. These attributes seem less about forgiveness’s purpose than about how it acts in the world,  purposing and ordering being two of its activities.

There is a break in the poem here, where forgiveness’s actions are described as being in opposition to the “stone towers” with their “hot fires” where “offerings” are made. Something causes our elemental forgiveness to “temper” such flames, suggesting that such activities need to be forgiven directly with some intervention, by changing the flames’ sacrificial purpose to ones of communication (“clay tablets”) and cooking.  Forgiveness, then, may be some universal, ‘autonomic’ response innate in all matter; but for humans, at least, it comes through our response to the “abiding blue” of our world. The poem ends with an echo of the Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary, an intercession for forgiveness, particularly as we end our days:

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

I sought to convey a sense of hopefulness in this final awareness of the universality of forgiveness we humans are graced to have, in the image of our planet, so small and alone in the vast darkness of space, and yet so blue and vibrant with life and living. Cheers