Beads of Compassion

For each of you, from your confreres worldwide:
a necklace of tears -- blue beads of compassion,
resignation, hope -- blue beads and soft blue feathers.

In the dark prison pits where solitude
and hunger rend you, bend your bodies to
grim facsimiles of age and despair,
these lucent necklaces are eloquent life.
Their soft, warm weight on your collarbones
eases the pain in your shoulders, and their light
repels the city shadows whose dry,
reeking fingers reach to clutch and stop your
hearts.  Keep breathing.  You.  Must.  Keep breathing.
Your breath stirs the blue feathers, causes the
blue beads to tremble.  Each stir and tremor
moves air, earth, sea and the inner ear
of humanity.  (Set like a clock, this
mechanism jumps.  Stammers.  Loses
time.  Resets itself to your time.  Hears you.)

To each of you, from your confreres worldwide:
we embrace you and brace you.  Breathe.  You are
ticking in the world’s ear now and forever.  Forgive

our tears, wear them (blue beads, feathers).  Breathe.

Prayer for Baha’is imprisoned in Iran, January, 2010 Poem By Janet Ruhe-Schoen