Poetry and Prayers for Japan

FOR THE WATERS OF JAPAN

These poems and prayers for the Waters of Japan were written during the weeks following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami by writers in Writing to Feed the Soul groups in Santa Cruz, California.

Click here to read poetry and prayers for the People and Land of Japan

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Spring Sea — Dyana Basist

The spring sea
all day ebb and flow
ebb and flow
–Buson

1.
In Japan writers are using the words spring sea
to signify the tsunami.
Even now there are thousands,
thousands of bodies floating
gently off the Honshu coast.

Like tremulous seaweed; nori, kelp, caught on rocks,
snagged in pink coral
Hung up and pulled down
by massive streams of currents.
Bodies strewn in the Pacific
only a minute ago were people busy in shops,
rolling up futons, simmering soup.

The unlucky ones wash to shore,
pull of moon and tide drags them up

in an unceremonious heap.
But the lucky ones find their way down,
past our abilities, calculations, gravestones.
They are just missing.

2.
For the last five years I have been learning
to make a bowl of tea.
Taoist tea, a simple version
that comes before meditation,
cousin to more complicated Japanese tea,
Urasenke.

It takes about fifteen minutes to whisk
my teacher a bowl of matcha
The movements; elegant and precise.
It took me the first three years
to remember the sequence.
I still omit washing the whisk or
rolling the bowl three times, not two.
We all do, that’s not the point.
It is in the utter attention or distraction
in making a bowl of tea
that becomes a vehicle to a deeper awareness
of my own availability to the moment
This moment.
And this moment.
Thousands of priceless tea bowls
have been broken, lost in the earthquake.
Japan is a country of tea.

3.
I stand at the edge of the Monterey Bay,
unsure of everything again.
I heard that an eighty year old woman
outran the tsunami on her bicycle.
We prepare. Fill bike tires, water containers,
lock our cupboards.
Stay inside, careful not to breathe radiation.
But it’s not an earthquake that gets us,
but hard rains. The nearby creek
turns pond, then river. A wooden deck
slides lazily into blackberry vines.
Then it just stops. Pond turns back to meadow,
shaggy grass staggers vertical, stunned in the sun.
The hammered freesias, each fluted cup spill
down the stems to the spring-soaked earth,
petals rise sultry in fragrant heat.

When I pray for the Fukushima Nuclear Plant,
I am praying for myself.
Pick collards, joi choi, kale from the garden.
I hear the radiation can be washed off.
I don’t argue but don’t believe it either.

The redwood tree outside my window
carries the waters of every good
and bad choice we make.

Soon Fukushima will be sucked
into hairy sponge bark
running up and down
its impossibly tall spine.

4.
Japan, I send you my deepest regrets–
to the ancestors, to the old ones
carried on their grandson’s backs to shelters,
babies with face masks, happy dogs
never to return to their homes, tea bowls, wives.

I light a stick of long temple incense.
Smoke winds a blue thread around my neck.
Ice blue: this is how I see the water
around Fukushima, the color of my mother’s new
leather couches, the color of glaciers melting.
That very same blue lifts off
in squalls, becomes the air we breathe.

Fukushima is my idiocy,
my greed, my prayer.
Even now I can hear the electric kettle hissing,
keeping our beverages up to temperature.
We want it hot, and hot it is becoming.

Step away from your computer:
it will not save you
Nothing will, but listen,
the scent of spring seas
fill the air: dew drops from Japan.

 

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Prayer for the Waters of Japan – Mary Camille Thomas

In the name of the Creator,
the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit.
O holy, mighty One,
open our hearts to compassion.

O Light of the world,
show us the way.
Mother of sorrows,
mingle your tears with ours.

Mother of mercy,
we are sorry.
Our Life, our Sweetness,
sweeten the poisoned waters.

Star of the sea,
shine your brightness there.
You fishermen, Peter, James, and Andrew,
join our prayer:
may the waters give life once more.

St. Brendan the navigator,
guide the energy of our prayers
to the water that wants healing.

O sacred energy that hallows
the Ganges and Brigid’s well,
the Jordan and every baptismal font,
permeate the wounded water with your pure love.

All you whales and creatures of the sea,
forgive us,
pray for us,
pray with us
and with all the angels and saints
for your home.

Thanks be to the water,
our life, our sweetness,
hear our prayer.

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I Ask You, Beloved — Nancy Grace Nuss

I ask you Beloved, to surround the wounded waters of Japan.
I welcome your great creative energetic love
and celebrate your wise adoration
of us children, your children.

Forgive us and help us to forgive ourselves.
Help us to know ourselves as you know us.
I welcome your love.

Oh how great is our need for your friendly, kindly care.
I ask you to send what is needed and wanted.
Help us stand bravely, help us know ourselves as worthy,
help us channel what you would bring here,
help us be big in your love.

Help us by stilling our fears.
Help me know how strong I become
when I recognize myself in relation to you–
humility as right relation.

I have such vital waters in this mammal body.
I know how dearly you care for each drop.
I ask for your continuing care,
and I know it is done.

I ask you, Beloved, to surround
the wounded waters of Japan.
As I look at what could be seen–
(if looked at from one angle)
as the disasters of my life,
knowing as I do your tender caring,
I ask and know that the waters and dear ones
are receiving your perfect holy enlivening.

Thank you for helping us.
Thank you for your healing.
Thank you for enabling us to be new.
Thank you.

 

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Prayer for the People of Japan – Ratna Jennifer Sturz

I am Water

I am Water.
Yes. I did rise up, roar and assume enormous force,
sweeping up homes, vehicles, livelihood and people.
Yes. The earth quaked. A shiver. A cry. A pain. A split.
A loud harrowing voice that broke the ground.

I am Water.
Yes. In swift fury, I soaked your land,
displacing routine, revenue and resource.
Yes. I understood some would meet death. Others would survive.
Earth’s energy called forth water. Cause and effect of Creation.

But it is not nature’s plan or my doing
that nuclear reactors create such danger.
That my womb is now adrift with chemicals,
calamities from your world,
not of my making.
Spills of oil into my guts. Toxic leaks infiltrating my wet purity.
I too, have been transgressed.

I am just Water.
Vessels sail across my waves,
From my depths you find food.
You play at my shores and on my back.
On a hot day, I refresh you.
I am Water and I wish you sprays of comfort.

There has been grave destruction;
the universe can help make reparation.
Sun shines on all.
She will dry up your sorrows and soft earth.
She will dry up tears and shine hope.
She will shed brightness where you thought only darkness would linger.

Air will diffuse vapors;
Wind will gently waft sweet fragrance of peony and plum blossoms.
Earth, water, fire and air– we will do our part to protect and heal.
All of the elements give our existence to sanction life.
Sometimes we must take life.
We too are sad.

Blame can go in many directions
so I prefer prayer.
I offer blessings to all those who were harmed
when my enormous strength stalked the ground.
Yes. I am Water.

As a mighty wave, I cannot stop myself; the trajectory is beyond my scope to adjust.
I can only pray that when I rise up, you have sufficient warning to save yourselves.
That knowing my capacity, you plan your towns for my appearance.
Know that the waters of time can fade your sorrows.
And that life is still worth living.

I cannot promise any of us a better future,
but I do not put radiation in my own waters.
My depths ache with the hearts of those who have been lost.
I am who I am.
I am Water–in its gentleness and in its fierceness.
I cannot stop the ground from rolling on your tender reality
or your human existence from being frail.

I am Water.
I will provide beauty, calm and sustenance as often as I can.
I will bathe you in what is soothing.
May the elements and forces of creation respond to all our loving prayers.

 

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Prayer for the People and Waters of Japan — Carolyn Davis Rudolph

I live this life as a blessing.

Every morning at the end of my formal sit, I open my heart and mind to the vast blue sky and pray. I respond to Dr. Omoto’s request and pray three times for the waters at the nuclear plant in Japan. I ask for the water’s forgiveness. I pray for the animals of the earth’s waters and the sky at the power plan, because the animals, water and sky ask me to. I then pray for the entire earth, her waters and the lovely sky above. I pray for my intimate friends in need of prayers.

I am impressed with the people of Japan, their actions of graciousness and quite courage. I remember in the 1980s, my husband, very much ensconced in corporate America, had a book, The Book of Five Rings: The Way of the Warrior, by Myamoto Musashi. This Japanese book that had become the new Bible informing actions for operating in the corporate world. It was used at the Harvard School of Business to discuss strategy. We had a copy, a thin hardback with more drawings than words; more poetic than text; here was something new to open to.

I wonder if my life is actually a prayer, a prayer to life. A prayer to joy, all these small occurrences. A prayer for possibility. I allow fear no entrance and choose to stand firmly, my feet in the soil of hope. An expanding spiral, an evolution, turning inward, and then ever widening radiating gratitude for all possibilities of healing, which is always a spontaneous gift, a surprise, a mystery.

May the waters of life flow clean and clear and sparkle with radiant health. I am water. I live this life in union with all waters in others and on this earth. My in-breath asks for forgiveness. My out-breath offers love. This one woman, lives her simple glorious, sometimes confusing life, as if she can heal the world.

 

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Prayer to the Waters – Miriam Goldberg

I wrap you in the joy of tumbling in your waves,
bubbles frothing up my skin, tickling
my cheeks, laughing in my armpits.
I let your limpid reflections be eyes
to behold rainbows glinting in jewels
that leap to the sun when children
raise their arms and voices in ecstatic shrieks
over the shimmering flight of drops
flung from their waving hands.
I merge my whole being into your
unending generosity so that you can know
the boundless love my heart becomes
in its surrender to your presence.
Oh waters, would that you could know
that gratitude most holy
bows its pleasure into you
as seamlessly as raindrops and breath
melt into a quiescence of listening to you
as they disappear in your embrace.

I offer my prayers on the willingness to witness
the bent and spiked wing feathers
torn from a bird caught in black oil slick
and tumbled to your shores, and know
that you did not ask to receive them, but you did.
I offer my prayers on the miles of fishing line
cast from greed and twisted into shrouds of death
filled with rotting carrion that float through your body,
even though you did not ask to cradle them.
I offer my prayers in witness of the invisible,
casual and wanton disregard of the nitrogen
and phosphate filled fertilizers, chemical waste,
pesticides, oily sunscreen, radioactivity,
excrement, cigarette butts, styrofoam
you did not ask to swallow, even as you
have carried them all in your belly and limbs.
I offer my prayers with the willingness to witness
the suffering you carry, all our suffering,
that which we know and that which we are not yet aware of.
I offer my prayers with the willingness to know
and ask for forgiveness, and the commitment
to let my heart continue to break open
to the joy and suffering you awaken and carry
in your flows as you continually bathe
and nourish us, your children.

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Dear Water – Barbara Thomas

I love you. You are so dear to me
How often I ignore
My dependence on you
And my body suffers
Because I am thirsty
My head aches, my body aches

The Essenes long ago created special prayers
Of gratitude for your presence in their lives
It was part of their daily practice
To bless the waters used daily
And bless the waters of the world

I say this prayer when I bathe,
or sit in my hot tub–

Dear Ocean Mother
How we your human children
Take you for granted
I have seen people throw their
Trash into your water
Seen dirty paper diapers
Thrown into the ocean
I see you wash this debris
Out to sea only to be deposited
On another shore

Dear Mother Ocean
You are a living being
I try to remember this
And say Hello and send you love when I arrive
And say goodbye when I leave

I found old, broken, large black shells
On the beach after a big storm.
They look old, ancient and worn with age
I envision some sea creature on a
Volcanic island creating its shell
From the materials available on that beach
In that ocean
And then, through time, tides, and space
Those shells are carried with
The currents to my shore, my beach
Here in California

So what is going to happen to the
Polluted waters of Japan
What is going to happen as the tides move in and out
As one ocean’s waters move
across the planet mingling and commingling
with the waters of the other oceans
Oceans named by people but all one big
Body of water flowing over the surface
Of our sweet planet
Our sweet Mother Earth
Gaia

So now I will create a bit of magic.
Create a myth and fairy tale
Of amazing possibilities
Possible
Because this picture has appeared
In my mind – so this moment
I claim it is possible:
I pray and decree
And direct
Any radioactive waters from Japan
Be directed to the massive island
of plastic garbage bags and pollution in the
middle of the ocean
I command and demand that these
Polluted waters eat the plastic
Nibble by nibble
Bit by bit
And in so doing the plastic island
Dissolves and the radioactive waters
Neutralize and chemically alchemically
Are purified – sweetened and harmless

I call on the Angels of the heavens
and the Angels of the waters,
I call on the guardian angels
that each species of fish
and water creature be directed
away from the polluted waters
Surrounded in a protective light
To keep them safe from harm
Alive and well
In the same manner I am praying
For the oceans to be protected
Kept alive and well
Healthy and safe from harm
Amen Amen Amen
Adoni Adoni Adoni

 

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