Me, sitting in wheelchair on left, many more people filing in to sit on the sides and back of the auditorium.

February

On Sunday afternoons at Kendal, we usually have a concert in the auditorium. This one was supposed be performed by two Oberlin Conservatory students playing a program of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. It was canceled as that was the day we had our share of the Big Snowstorm. We had a foot of snow that was just tapering off by 4:00, the usual time we  begin listening to sublime musical offerings.

Instead, given the prediction, Ellie and her husband, new-last-year-residents, decided the night before to call a pop-up peace and justice vigil to be held in the predictably empty auditorium at that time. Amazingly, as some folks would choose to remain comfortably in their homes to watch it on our campus wide TV, we gathered about 75 people around our Peace Pole, newly purchased due to the efforts of a committee spearheaded by Ellie and her husband Carlton. (Ordered from a company that makes them, ours has “May peace prevail on earth” in 8 different languages including Mohawk and in braille.) This spontaneous gathering was truly representative of our diverse community, as we shared voices of our fears, anger, hopelessness, and the many opportunities for active engagement locally, and, above all, hope. We spoke, listened, and sang together for peace and justice.

I was inspired to write a poem for the occasion and was moved to write another one the day after and a final one the day after that.

ICE TRYPTIC :  (three poems for Peace, by Judi Bachrach)

I:

Sitting for Peace in the Snowstorm            1/25/2026

Today, we have snow, you have ice.

We have desert heat, you have monsoons.

We share the same tapestry of sky

shaping the invisible atmosphere

rising miles above our heads

into dark universal space.

We have tragedy, you have joy.

We have violence, you sit for peace.

We have lost a parent; you birthed a child.

Emotions swim in the same ocean,

one drop indistinguishable from the other.

At our most basic,

we are always both a particle and a wave.

What is empty, what is full?

What is real, what is true?

What exists beyond my senses?

Embodying peace subsumes thought.

Embodying peace subsumes thought.

In the atmospheric ocean of peace,

Oneness is universal. I would dwell there.

II:

Embodied Peace   1/26/26

Embodied peace will tell you where to go and what to sign,

who to call, what to say, and when to remain silent.

Peace will tell you when to put your body on the line

and when to retreat because you still have more to do here.

Peace is loud or silent,

isolating and a magnet for gathering

like-minded souls to move the power of ignorance.

Peace erupts like a volcano,

lava streams covering everything

on the way to creating new ground.

Peace radiates the glow of love and justice

weighing exactly as much as that which is needed

to rebalance the scale.

Embodying peace is the work we do

to listen and to take right action.

III:

For the Love of Finches     1/27/26

Today it’s not the inbreath

of horror and anger

responding to wanton destruction

of life and sanity.

It’s the slow outbreath

of resolve to live in love.

The first awakening from sleep

into the world of an eldering body

carries miraculous awareness

of living another day,

another opportunity for joy.

Not in spite of sorrow,

but because I cannot en-joy one

without the other.

Gratitude for seeming opposites

finds a nesting home in my heart

where shivering finches

fluff their feathers sharing our bitter cold.

We feed them and their lives nourish ours in return.

That is how love works.

In gratitude and joy, I offer my life

to the Oneness of love,

one small seed at a time.