Accepting Heaven at Great Basin by Nathalie Handal

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend November 25, 2016   Accepting Heaven at Great Basin   Nathalie Handal

When you doubt the world look at the undivided darkness   look at Wheeler Peak cliffs like suspended prayers   contemplate the cerulean the gleaming limestone   the frozen shades the wildflowers   look at the bristlecone pine a labyrinth to winding wonders   listen to the caves sing silently   remember the smell of sagebrush after a thunderstorm   that Lexington Arch is a bridge of questions   in the solitude of dreams that here   distances disturb desire to deliver a collision of breaths   the desert echoes in this dark night sky   stars reveal the way a heart can light a world.            Copyright © 2016 Nathalie Handal. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I'm an urbanite but when I started teaching at the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College and discovered the numinous openness of Nevada, something unnamed untangled me. Standing under the crisp golden-red light then the infinite dark at Great Basin for the first time felt like being in the middle of my heart and asking, where do I go from here? Where does one go after they've lived wars, been too close to death's shadows, and then sees a version of heaven? Can we give ourselves permission to inhale its glory without betraying those who couldn't flee, or didn't survive? Perhaps we are meant to see such wonder to inform us of how beauty resists." —Nathalie Handal   Nathalie Handal is the author of The Republics (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). She teaches at Columbia University and the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College, and lives in Queens, New York. Poetry by Handal   The Republics (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)    "Negotiations with a Volcano" by Naomi Shihab Nye "Unpacking a Globe" by Arthur Sze "Earth" by Sherwin Bitsui Imagine Our Parks with Poems   This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant. Imagine Your Parks grants celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service and the 50th anniversary of the NEA by supporting projects that use the arts to engage people with the memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System in 2016. Read more poems about our National Parks. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038