Summer
08
Poem of the Month: JULY
A Box with Pearls
A Found Poem
Six-year-old Josiah Quincy responds to a question by his teacher Bronson Alcott who asked,
“Can you say to yourself, ‘I can remove this mountain?’”
I.
My hand cannot lift up a mountain
but I feel and I know that my conscience
is greater than the mountain.
My conscience can grow.
It is the same kind of spirit
as made the mountain in the first place.
II.
The body is a mountain,
and the spirit says, “Be moved,”
and it is moved into another place.
We think too much about clay.
We should think of spirit.
III.
A mother loves
her baby’s spirit
bursting away
out of the body.
It is alive;
it is perfectly happy.
IV.
Why do people mourn for bodies
when their friends die?
It should be a matter of rejoicing.
If we should go into the street
and find a box, an old dusty box,
and put into it some very fine pearls,
and bye and bye the box should grow
old and break, why, we should not
even think about the box.
"Reclamation," published in 2005 by Ourstory Media, is Marcia's first book of poems.
To order click below:
Marcia is a member of the Upper Delaware Writers Collective, a group of twenty poets who meet monthly to discuss their craft. Founded in 1993 by Mary Greene and based in Sullivan County, NY, the group frequently performs in Wayne and Pike counties in PA and Orange County, NY.
Visit the link below to see Marcia and fellow UDWC cohorts perform poems centering on the theme of life in a small town, works that had their debut at the 2007 DIGit Media Exposition in
Narrowsburg, NY.
http://www.youtube.com/UDWC
Links to more writing:
http://moondance.org/2001/fall01/poetry/breath.html
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/content/cb.asp?cbid=4478
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/content/cb.asp?cbid=5064
http://www.subtletea.com/nightstandmarcianehemiah.htm
http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/ppa/ppa473.html#fp1
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2005/09/literarysupplement/arspoetica.php