This poem by Marge Piercy exquisitely expresses the longing for Spring that many of us feel at this time of year.

Ms. Piercy has written many poems that are used in Unitarian Universalist worship services, and she has written some specifically for this use, in her words, “poetry intended for public performance by people who are not poets.”

Winter Promises

by Marge Piercy

Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby’s buttocks,
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders,
purple neon flawless glistening
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast
growing as Jack’s Viagra-sped stalk,
big as truck tire zinnias that mildew
will never wilt, roses weighing down
a bush never touched by black spot,
brave little fruit trees shouldering up
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit:

I lie on the couch under a blanket
of seed catalogs ordering far
too much. Sleet slides down
the windows, a wind edged
with ice knifes through every crack.
Lie to me, sweet garden-mongers:
I want to believe every promise,
to trust in five pound tomatoes
and dahlias brighter than the sun
that was eaten by frost last week.

Source: “Winter Promises” by Marge Piercy.

I’m still working my way through the 1914 American Unitarian Association New Hymn and Tune Book, and bring you three hymn texts today.

There are a few things I try to keep in mind as I go through this material. Firstly, though this collection was published in 1914, many of the texts are from far earlier than that. As in our present-day hymnal, there was probably consideration taken to well-loved traditional hymns, balanced with some new things. Secondly, the language is unabashedly theistic and in many cases patriarchal.

What I take away from these texts into my here-and-now life experience is the sense of longing expressed in so many different ways — longing for the touch of the Holy, longing to be free from the flaws inherent in all of us, longing to see a better, brighter world. I think we have many of the same longings now, but we don’t express them nearly so eloquently.

Hymns from The New Hymn and Tune Book

published by the American Unitarian Association, 1914

100. Where is thy God? set to the tune Domenica S.M.
Thomas Toke Lynch, 1855

Where is thy God, my soul?
Is he within thy heart;
Or ruler of a distant realm
In which thou hast no part?

(Read on … )