Latest Poem
- Prayer for a Baptism
Today I recreate you in forgetfulness.
Stay as you are in the pure untethered
state you were, as you opened your eyes
to the first moment of the world,
as loving hands lifted you from the carnage
of your own rupturing birth and
your unalterable ancestry
and into the light.Forget the pain and screams and all
that came before, still entwined in the
strands of your DNA. The cycle of our sins
shame and rage. Our common, blood-soaked
ancestry -the hideous history of the world,
our collective legacy. All villains, all victims,
all enraged, all disgraced by the stories
we carry, the grudges, the guilts we bear,
festering like wounds from birth to death
and passed on through generations.Be new in the world. Expect only love.
Be new in the world. Break the cycle.
Forget all horror and shame. It is not yours.
Be new in the world. Forgive it all. Forget it all,
like a bad dream and feel, dwell in, linger in
that sweet luminous moment
before the voices begin to wail and rave,
spinning stories of outrage and pain, hatred, guilt.Before bitterness poisons and corrupts
your sacred hope, your tender heart.
Resolve to forgive again and again,
if only to bring you back to this place of purity.
Forgive the monsters within and the monsters without.
Be new in the world – expect only love.
Beginning this moment, live only in love.
Dorothy Cantwell has worked as an educator, actor and playwright. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Constellate Literary Journal, Flash Boulevard, River and South Review, Poetrybay, Angel City Review, Amethyst Review, First Literary Review East and other print and online journals. Her poem, Edward under the Sky, (Brownstone Poets Anthology 2024) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City. She studies poetry with Sister Fran McManus. Contact decantwell7@gmail.com.
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