Let love always be with you
and light shall shine
upon you
so long
as the spirits
of swans
and bears and snails
hover over you,
so long as you accept
each turn
of faith's road
and do not resist it,
do not fight it
as others are obliged
to do,
others who are living
in the
world of the actual,
the world
where the dollar completes
the man
and the man
completes the woman
and when all else fails
it is a world
where the self
completes
the self.
So long as
you dwell
in the unseen world,
the world underneath
the superimposed
material,
the world
of the unspoken
unwritten,
the world
within the penumbra
of all being,
the world
that all of the other worlds
have sprung from,
but that
nobody believes in
except
for just a little bit
and ashamedly so,
but the world
that everybody
had once believed in
and had acted upon
and the world
that whether we like it or not
we are all
a part of,
each one of us
and it isn't in the churches,
not really
and it isn't
in the skyscrapers,
nor in the coins
or in the cards
nor in the
minds
of psychiatrists,
although it is difficult
to manage
with the powers that be
but so long as
you remain steadfastly
a part of this world
an invisible world,
you will remain
protected
against all pains
and terrors
and afflictions
of an earthly
kind.
Amen
and women
and children.
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Geri Lipschultz teaches writing at Borough of Manhattan Community
College and at the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, in
addition to her extensive work in Long Island public schools as a
writer-in-residence. She received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers'
Workshop and has both published and performed her work. In 1985, Woodie
King, Jr. produced her one-woman show at New Federal Theatre in Manhattan.
She has received awards from New York State and others for her fiction and
her songs. She edited a book of children's peace poems, published by the
World Peace Prayer Society, and wrote and directed the play IF YOU ASKED ME,
based on that text. She writes a bi-monthly column for a local newspaper,
where she interviews women in the arts. Her work has been anthologized, and
some of her publications include The New York Times, College English, and
The Black Warrior Review.