| What Saves Us |
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by Mary Van Denend Half on the earth, half in the heart, the remedies for all our pains wait for the songs of healing - Joseph Bruchac
ART SAVES LIVES— an aria could save us. Perhaps the light of Christ might just show up in a Cezanne. Remember how David played his harp to quiet the mad ramblings of Saul? In my town, harpists still play for dying patients, lowering blood pressure, easing their pain with strings instead of needles. Did you know that in the rubble of Sarajevo a drama company formed, performing for anyone who would come to a bombed-out theatre? Even now, young men in prison cells write poetry as if it mattered, turning hardness of hearts like soft clay on a wheel. Peter at fifteen, his basement room a black tomb of anger and despair, where Marilyn Manson blared in his brain and the walls hid psychedelic secrets–– It was Mozart, it was good wine, and the Psalms. It was that other wine at another table that carried us through the valley of the shadow back to still waters. What saves us may simply arrive as Yo-Yo Ma on his cello while lentils simmer, or some lines by Mary Oliver read to a pattern of light and leaves that the wind offers up. Mary Van Denend lives and writes in western Oregon, though her childhood was spent in many places. Poetry of place speaks deeply to her. She has published work in regional journals such as The Asheville Review, Eloquent Umbrella, Wellspring, and others. She is the mother of four grown children and a recent graduate of Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing. |
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