Thank you to the editors of The Potomac Review (Maryland), Main Street Rag (North Carolina), California Quarterly (Calif.), SurVision (Ireland), and Compass Rose Literary Journal (D.C. / online) for 2024 publications of my poetry! I appreciate it.
This poem, “Sand Mandala,” appeared the Summer 2024 issue of Main Street Rag, a poem close to my heart, because unlike some of my work, autobiographical. While I don’t usually reprint, I shall here with irregular formatting as I cannot style it correctly through Web design:
Sand Mandala
As our June afternoon becomes
sweaty becoming laughs becoming plans
becoming children’s tugs, why not
whistle these steps into a dance?
Why not mold our circumstance to craft
mementos out of colored sand
as joy peacocks us to parade
or we huddle for some storm to end?
I’ll touch this question into a path
before let go—and the sand rivers home.
Tibetan monks from the Dalai Lama’s compound in India came through Baltimore, Maryland again this summer.
It was the first time I’ve seen them since the beginning of the pandemic. The above mandala was completed from sand on a Sunday at the cusp of the transformation-back ceremony. I was blessed to attend it. I also attended a morning meditation led by three monks from the traveling cohort alongside my teenage daughter. What could be better!
Cheers, in gratitude,
G. H. Mosson