Nancy’s Poetry, by Nancy Lael Braun

Submitted March 2024

At the request of Diane Findlay, I am sharing this entry as part of the Iowa Bahá’í history project. I have been writing poetry since high school and became a Bahá’í in 1975 when I was 21. In a Venn diagram those two things have not always overlapped entirely. But, of course, Bahá’í perspectives, experiences and struggles are sometimes reflected in my poems. I have also written many poems about the experience of fasting in an effort to embrace the fast more fully and mindfully. In 2024, I published a collection of those poems entitled Fasting Slowly. Here are four small poems, two about the fast and two about life.

A Day of Sand and Stars

The whole day is silvered.

There is a humming like bees.

This morning prayers flow out

as burning stars. Insights,

like white sand, pour back

into the spread fingers

of my understanding.

Overcast

To be alert,

not dull,

awake,

rather than adrift,

to stay ardent

is difficult.

I need to be hungrier.

Rice Paper Moon

The day seemed destined

to be an origami swan

except I misfolded it

at each step, its pleats

askew, a twisted coot.

I swim in circles of wishing

to reverse my mistakes.

Then simple midnight

slides me a new page.

(published in Aquifer-Florida Review)

Shift in Tone

God places honey on my tongue

in words of submission to a perfect Will

round which I can curve my life.

But when someone I love is wrung

by pain or hurt, I am loudly begging—

the true ringing of my pleas

fill my whole head like great bells.

                             -Nancy Lael Braun