In this week’s poem, by Martin Steingesser, a letter to a friend leads to meditations on home and exile, colonization and the visceral, fundamental connections between us as beings under the sun. I love this poem’s intimate, searching voice, its bright imagery of sunflowers and autumn leaves, and its final turn to a vision of our calling as poets – and as beings together in the world.

Steingesser is the author of three books of poems, his most recent, “Yellow Horses,” published by Deerbrook Editions. He served as Portland’s first poet laureate, from 2007-’09.

Letter to Kamal Boullata
By Martin Steingesser

Restless now in the blood light of autumn, afternoon sun
on the carpet, the cat preening, I think of you Kamal,
refugee in our land of refugees that fears refugees—
Palestinians were forbidden to paint a homeland.
All the artists went to jail, you said.

We met in the northern light of Blue Mountain,
Adirondack forests flaming yellow and red this same season,
what is changing constant. When you look at a leaf, you said,
feeling into its turning—are one with everything,
when something about that leaf, beautiful beyond knowing,
wound red as an aging sun, something beyond burning,
that is Allah akbar! wondrous as god.

Long conversations walking those woods, Kamal,
I imagine we were joined—underneath, not unlike the trees,
yet still am confounded by the borders between us.
For how many Original Peoples has it been too late?
Think of the Maya, Pueblo—the Apalachee, Cherokee,
Shoshone, Zuni—all those heartened by another drum,
refusing eternal, material progress.
Now the harvests of profit fill our plate.
Now uranium tailings ride the Plains winds.
Now the dark bud of melanoma blooms on hand, or cheek.
Now the blights with plagues, the spirit hearse.

I imagine a line joining everything—imagine pulling on it
and watching every lost face rise and turn to the light,
the way fields of mammoth sunflowers turn, flaring
in a lowing sun.
Pray, let my tongue be fire and flower.
Pray, let our tongues be fire, and flower

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Letter to Kamal Boullata,” © 2023 by Martin Steingesser, was published in Yellow Horses (Deerbrook Editions). It appears by permission of the author.