Holy Ground

The other day, one of my friends told me she read my blog, and then I remembered "I have a blog!" (I'm a forgetful person.) Anyways, here's a post, just to say I posted.

This is a poem I jotted down after touring the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial near Weimar, Germany. (On the gates to the prisoners' section of the camp was a Nazi motto: "Jenem das Seine" or "To each his own".)

Holy Ground

What is holy ground?

It is something found?

Or made -- a dream of our collective mind,

Visible to the blind,

Jenem das Seine

They say the deaf can hear one thing:

When funeral bells toll and ring

This ground cries out inaudibly, undeniably:

"You are your brother's keeper."

Jenem das Seine

Each heavy step you take

Bloodies your shoe. Take it off

And put on love

Hope died here. Let not love follow

Jenem das Seine

What is holy ground?

When God is Father

Church, Mother

Man, Brother

Holy ground emerges, an emission of the collision

Jenem das Seine