I saw a girl’s diary, in Russian, with the dates
that her mother died, her father, her sister….
I saw how much bread 125 grams is (2x2x6″)
they lived on that during much of the siege.
gallagher
21 Jun 87 #2
Leningrad
Archive for the ‘Catalyst2’ Category
1987-06-21 #2 – Leningrad
Thursday, April 27th, 20232023-10-25 – Ancestry
Monday, September 25th, 2023An hour can be so long.
And even a minute.
And yet the years stretch behind us,
gathering.
And here they lie before me
with all their days and hours; each lived.
Their births, marriages, children and deaths
one after the other; again and again.
I find myself pulled through time
to the coal fields of Eastern Pennsylvania
and the farms and dirt roads
where they all lived.
Rising and falling,
naming their children and passing their years.
And each with a life
as rich and full of feeling as mine.
I slot them here, one after the other, in their lives; come and gone
and nothing is left of them – save for a few photocopies
of old hand-written ledgers and some grainy photos
of faces who never saw a telephone or a light bulb.
And yet, in these pictures,
their eyes shine bright
with the light of a day, now forever gone,
but so clear and real to them … then.
And even after all this sifting through their lives
and dwelling on their passings,
my own mortality still, somehow,
remains, to me, just a possibility.
Gallagher
25Sep23
Christchurch
1988-10-05 – A Reflection
Thursday, November 16th, 2023Close your eyes
And place your hands together; as if in prayer.
Open your mind’s eye
and begin to see… and to feel…
we’re going to take a journey.
There is sunlight here that caresses your skin
and a breeze that pulls small feathers through your hair.
You are in the wheat fields of God’s love where,
just as the crops come and go,
so do the people rise and fall.
See the generations, tumbling forward,
one over another around you.
There are children, age, beauty
and death here.
Let your mind’s eye close again
and feel the warmth of your hands
still pressed together.
And let silence and being fill you…
and emptiness and light.
Then open your eyes and look again….
Here is the trusting child’s laughter.
And there, the warm brown skin of a woman.
And there… the eyes of a friend.
Children running through
the fields of flowers,
the couples loving each other
and the old people watching
it all with great compassion.
Feel the warmth
of the old person’s hand on your arm.
Gallagher
05 Oct 1988
Mexico City
– I was on my way into the Contra/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua
with Witness For Peace to when I wrote this in Mexico City as we
were receiving orientation instructions. Each of us wrote a
reflection to read to the others. This was mine.