Ode to My Community
By Jaz Sufi
July 4, 2025
Praise to the three Little Free Libraries within walking distance
of my home, and all the hands that keep them stocked.
Praise to the business park holding a lake inside its cupped palms,
and praise to the office workers who bring their sandwich crusts
down to the ducks that nest along its shore.
Praise to the ice rink that coats a corner of its parking lot in winter,
bored teenagers dutifully renting out bright orange skates
to couples on first and fortieth dates.
Praise to the Girl Scouts that cluster like clockwork every year
in front of the grocery store, and how empty they leave our wallets.
Praise to summers spent splashing in the water sprays
of Central Park, parents chatting to the side as children charge
the playground, hang upside-down from anything and everything.
Praise to the crowds of the Art & Wind Festival,
and praise to the silence when we bow our heads together.
Praise to the hospital on a hill where I was born, the schools I attended
tucked between parks and canyons, and how, even when I leave,
I can't stay away.
Grief Poem
By Jaz Sufi
Written for the Memorial Day Program
May 26, 2025
Sometimes the clouds above are so heavy with grief
that you wonder if the sky has lost a brother, too,
or a mother, a lover, someone whose light could pierce
through the grey. How lonely it must be to grieve alone,
high above anyone's reach, only comforted
by the tips of the tallest trees or the feathered hush
of a bird's beating wings. Small as we humans are,
we know how big love can be with nowhere left to go,
and so we give it somewhere to go: our rituals and services,
funerals and wakes; the ways we come together
to fall apart. Every story we share about those
who've left before us is a place to put that love.
Each memory reminds us how close they are even now,
how they're with us always -- like how the stars
don't stop shining during the day, their light invisible
but still bright as it ever was before.
Untitled
By Jaz Sufi
Written for the Inspire Public Art Dedication
January 11, 2025
Listen to how the light strikes through the glass
to cast its color on the concrete. It traveled here
from millions of miles away, only for us to call it art
in the last few feet. It's all a matter of perspective:
which direction the light is shining, which shadows
can be considered art, what the word "beautiful" means
to the beholder. Behold this art, the book above us,
with its rainbow pages like windows to other worlds
the same as any other book, only more vivid.
This book will stand the test of time, withstand
wind and weather, all to serve as a lighthouse
on the shore of literary landscapes.