O, to challenge life’s inequities. 
To stand up for the meek 
and disenfranchised, 

to raise our voices like divas 
capable of breaking the glass 
ceilings of misogyny 

into a thousand crystals that shine 
brighter than the Hope Diamond. 
To wake each morning and 

shake our fists at naysayers 
who refuse to claim the hard 
realities of climate change. 

To fight for sunsets that bow 
down to the mysteries of ancient 
stone circles, to dance 

the Druid’s dance of inclusion 
and celebrate each rising moon. 
To settle into a new 

set of beatitudes: the daily 
words Right Reverends give 
to anyone who’ll listen. 

O, to be love warriors, truth 
seekers, believers. O, to be 
a curmudgeon of joy, too. 

Publisher’s Note:

Epigraph above is from a meditation which appears in Braided Way Magazine (Facebook, 7 July 2022). The Right Reverend Steven Charleston is an elder of the Choctaw Nation and a retired Episcopal bishop of Alaska who’s been posting his daily meditations to Facebook for ten years. He’s also the author of several books, including eight collections of his meditations, most recently Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage.

Margaret Dornaus

holds an MFA in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. A semifinalist in Naugatuck River Review’s 13th annual Narrative Poetry Contest, she had the privilege of editing and publishing a pandemic-themed anthology—behind the mask: haiku in the time of Covid-19—through her small literary press Singing Moon in 2020.

Her first book of poetry, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose, won a 2017 Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America. Recent poems appear in I-70 Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Minyan Magazine, MockingHeart Review, One Art, Silver Birch Press, and The Ekphrastic Review.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ When a Tree Falls, ekphrastic haibun by Margaret Dornaus which MacQ recently nominated for the Red Moon Anthologies.

⚡ Le Rêve, ekphrastic haibun by Margaret Dornaus which was nominated by MacQ in November 2021 for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).