Richard Cambridge

Returning

There are scars on my soul:

ghosts of ghosts of longing

left their mark when they left,

starved for longing.

My stomach flips

to my throat.

I've been away

for a long time.

Yellowbird did you follow me

to see I arrived safely?

Your song is a thorn

of longing.

Are you God's messenger,

a witness to me?

A promise of return?

Your song winds my heart,

a vine of longing.

Beloved Bird, golden, black-winged—

part sun, part night—

Your song is a vine of longing!

____________

If I Could

die right now

it would be

after my own hands

had just squeezed

the oranges

and before my lips

could sip

the fresh coffee

___________

Canticle for Breakfast

The table is round. The plate, the glass, the cup

I place upon it are round. The juice in the glass

is orange like the sun on a good day; the coffee

creamed to brown. The pancake on the plate is round

and its skin is the color of all the races, from the lighter

tones, through the coppers, to the deepest browns.

The plate, the glass, the cup from earth were drawn

and shaped by hand and fired into form.

Beloved One who formed the fiery sun,

the earth from space appears your Loving Eye.

This earth each day you warm and clothe with light.

At night you wrap us in a shawl of stars.

___________

Ten Flowers

This morning I picked ten flowers—

primroses, pale-yellow and gold—

for the cream pitcher-vase on the altar.

When I finished praying I said,

In Thy Name and by Thy Flowers, Amen.

I thought to correct it, but God said, No,

Let’s try flowers instead of power today.

What if, in the place of an angry fist

a bouquet of flowers broke upon a face?

Instead of a bloody lip, the question—

Who have you been kissing this morning?

What a day could follow from a question like that!

Why get out of bed, or leave the altar?

Do Nothing! Proclaim it Holy!

Let the generals do the fighting!

A child’s hand will overturn their chessboard.

The scent of primroses is early morning spring rain.

__________

As I was about to pray

I heard a bird chirping

outside my window.

What are my prayers

to this beautiful sound?

So I folded my prayers

in the song of the bird,

in the wings of the song

rising to God.

__________

Offering

Today I wear red—

for blood— for the Tribe

and all my relations.

The sun is shining in my face

as I look out to the blue-gray sea.

Cigarette between two fingers

burns down to the filter—

incense of a sort:

tobacco from my Mother.

I break it off as a sister taught me:

feel the burn— a light penance.

“If you must smoke,” she said to me once,

“then break it off at the end and scatter

the last bits of tobacco on the earth.

But Mother— she doesn’t like the filters.”

I was going on about offering,

my blood, wearing red for the tribe,

the sun and the blue-gray sea,

and this feeling I have of being alone

but being connected to all living beings

that are rooted, that walk and swim and fly

over this thin crust of earth we call our home.

If there are holy places,

surely this island is one of them.

With its cleansing wind, wildflowers,

silent moors of scrub, and the gulls

calling to the salt in my blood,

this body I dwell in

becomes a temple filled with prayer.

Heart kindles, burns.

Words escape my lips.

Incense circles upward—

Offering.

__________

Last Thoughts, Nantucket '94

The last thing I did before leaving

was squeeze three oranges.

The mouth of the juicer was misaligned

so the first drops missed the glass,

spilling on the counter.

I got upset but God said, Leave it,

that's My Portion, so I let it be,

a pool of orange spreading around

the glass. When I finished, the juice

filled right to the brim and God said, See—

it would have spilled anyway,

but being who I AM, well, you know,

first fruits. I went outside and

raised the glass to the sun and gave thanks,

orange to orange, for the gift of God

and thought how it got to where it was—

squeezed in a glass in my hand; the grove

where it was grown; the farmer,

and all the machinations of commerce

to get them to the store where I bought them;

the machine I used to squeeze the fruit

rather than just by hand (though I used

my hands) and gave thanks to myself

as I did to God, and to the ones

who gave so I could receive, and said,

This is good, all good, and drained the glass.

__________

The Gift

is being here in the space

of all there is.

The bedspread is green,

covered with flowers

or birds,

I cannot tell.

My heart is not empty

and needs to be.

I withhold substance

for space to grow

and sweetness

to sharpen the longing.

The bed is almost un-made;

the corner turned down for you.

All poems Copyright by Richard Cambridge 

Biography

Richard Cambridge’s poetry has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Nantucket Journal, Asheville Poetry Review, and other publications. He was a member of the Boston Championship Slam Team in 1992, and won the Masters Slam at the National Poetry Slam in 1997. He is recipient of numerous awards including The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, a finalist for a residency at the Fine Arts Work Shop in Provincetownde-force” by the Boston Globe, with featured runs at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Playwrights Theater, and Little Flags Theater. He is a long-time resident of Cambridge, MA where he curates the Poets’ Theater at the legendary Club Passim. In 2003 he received the Cambridge Peace and Justice Award for the contributions of his art and activism. In 2004 his book of poems, “PULSA— A Book of Books” was published by Hanover Press. In 2005 he was appointed a Fellow at the Black Earth Institute, a progressive think tank based in Wisconsin. He has just finished RIDE, a hitchhiking memoir. An excerpt recently won Honorable Mention for Short Fiction in the New Millennium Writings Contest.

“On This Island of My Longing” is a manuscript of selected poems written on and about Nantucket where he has spent early summer since 1981.