Category: poetry

poetry

Shucking Peas

Sally7 Comments

Pods
In hand
Peas removed
Bowl slowly fills
Mom’s garden harvest
In her lap as she works
Orange-red sunset outside
Head falls forward [snore] then snaps up
“I’m not sleeping — just resting my eyes!”
Pods in hand, peas removed, bowl slowly fills

The W3 challenge this week was to write a Dectina Refrain in honor of Mother’s Day and be sure to include the word “mother” (or a variation of it).

The Dectina Refrain is a 10-line, unrhymed, syllabic poem with a precise structure:

  • Line 1: 1 syllable
  • Line 2: 2 syllables
  • Line 3: 3 syllables
  • Line 4: 4 syllables
  • Line 5: 5 syllables
  • Line 6: 6 syllables
  • Line 7: 7 syllables
  • Line 8: 8 syllables
  • Line 9: 9 syllables
  • Line 10 (Refrain): Combine the exact text of lines 1–4, in order, as a single closing line
poetry

Three Threads

Sally3 Comments

The Pentecostal spring of the first Christian church contrasts sharply with the icy rigidity of our Christianity today … This community of faith and community of life in the first love was marked by the risen Christ … Everything depends on seeing the mystery of the risen Christ as unconditional love.

~~ Eberhard Arnold, Innerland: A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel

The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are serious about innovation, must we not conclude that we need something new to replace our perpetual “war to end war”?

~~Wendell Berry, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

It seems to me that the Bible says that true conversion (turning, change, rebirth) comes at the point when a person realizes that the God who was once considered to be a powerful enemy, who was to be avoided or bargained with is, in reality, a friend who is to be trusted. Just when we expect to get clobbered for our guilt, we get clobbered by grace. We realize that, in our frantic search for peace and happiness, we have looked in the wrong places and have overlooked the God who has always been looking for us. God does not have to destroy us in order to deliver us.

~~ William Willimon, The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything

I begin each day with reading from multiple books. It’s just a thing I do. I love when three different authors from different backgrounds, different books, speak on the same topic.

Eberhard Arnold was German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and co-founder of the Bruderhof, born in 1883 and in 1935. I read a piece by Arnold this morning in a book called Bread and Wine: Reading for Lent and Easter. The book is published by Plough, a publishing house that Arnold helped to found.

Wendell Berry is a novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist and farmer. I first learned about him when I went to Hutchmoot in 2011. (Clink on the link if you’re asking what’s a Hutchmoot.) Recently I was going through books in the attic and found a book of agricultural essays. As I was reading it, I found that some days one or two paragraphs gave me enough food for thought that I had to stop. That made it a slow read, but not a slog. It was fascinating and relevant, even though it had been written fifty years ago. I told one of my sons that I was reading Wendell Berry and he lent me the book where I read this essay.

William Willimon is a former Methodist bishop whose books I am reading this year. I pick an author each year and focus on him. Willimon is this year’s AOY (Author of the Year).

I love when thoughts come together from different places, so I wrote a poem about it.

One
Over
The other –
Three threads braided
Each one different
And yet are similar
Love, non-violence, and grace
Actually “clobbered by grace”
(Is clobbering a violent act?)
One over the other — three threads braided

(I need to write a Dectina Refrain this week for W3, so I thought I would test out the form here.)

fiction · poetry

The Age of Open Doors

Sally13 Comments

I reached the age of open doors
It was the time to choose
After years of thoughtful mentors
Whose advice should I use?

Door one revealed a scene sublime
Flowery, peaceful, green
The sun had just begun its climb
O’er this idyllic scene

Enticing sunrise pink and blue
The dawn of a brand new day
I stopped myself from stepping through
And looked the other way

A smell came from the second door
Putrid, foul, rank
I looked and saw things I abhor
My heart within me shrank

I knew at once where I must go —
Stepped past the lintel post
And entered not where flowers grow
But where I was needed most.

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge where Poet of the Week Yvette M. Calleiro prompts us to create a poem that explores a fictional world—utopian or dystopian, your choice. This world must be wholly imagined and not reflect the current reality we live in. Let your imagination run freely.

  • Use 20 lines or fewer.
  • Write about a fictional utopian or dystopian world.
  • Do not portray the current state of our world in your poem.
Life · poetry

Rhyming Recipe for Ikigai

Sally13 Comments

Think of what you love to do
Jot those things down, one or two

Think of skills where you excel
Not half-bad, but really well

Think of things for which you’re paid
Perhaps in money or in trade

Now think of what the world needs most —
Is something there of which you boast?

Where those things meet is ikigai*
Find that thing; your soul will fly

*ee-kee-guy

This is my response to this week’s W3 prompt, which is to:

Write a poem in rhyming couplets (two lines that rhyme) that gives instructions for making something.

Requirements:

  • Use rhyming couplets throughout
  • Give clear steps or instructions
  • Be creative with what the“recipe” is for

Think of it as turning instructions into something memorable and playful through rhyme.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Ikigai this week. I have a version of that graphic posted in my office.

Too often, I feel that we, as a society, shove people into a job that meets only one or two of those criteria. Find something that meets all four and you’ll find fulfillment and happiness.

poetry

i sing of Alex

Sally10 Comments

i sing of Alex slender and brave
interjected self to save
a woman pushed
pepper-sprayed
oh, if Alex had only stayed
home (and watched the news)
but instead
armed with phone
(and holstered legal gun)
he reached out to help
(as any nurse would
caring
for the
SUFFE-
Ring)
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM
agents counted bullet holes
as Alex lay dying
(minneapolis crying)

This week’s W3 challenge is to write a poem that is inspired by another poet.

My favorite poet has long been e. e. cummings. His poem, i sing of Olaf glad and big, is a powerful story that leaves me with a knot in my stomach every time I read it.

Do I love that poem? I love its power. I love its grittiness. I love that poetry can produce a knot in my stomach, and still make me want to read it again.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · poetry

N is for Nurse

Sally3 Comments

There once was a lovely young nurse
To whom hiking and camping was not averse
What began with a “hello”
From a young handsome fellow
[can you finish my limerick for me?]

My mom and dad met when she was working nights as a nurse. My father had the job of picking up IV bottles from the inpatient floors and bringing them to Central Sterilization. (It’s a job that no longer exists. Thanks, plastic.)

Anyway, as he was making his rounds, she and my father started chatting about hiking and camping in New England. The rest is history.

poetry

Words and Seeds

Sally8 Comments

Words are seeds; seeds are words
They are scattered by the breeze
Who knows where they will go, take root
On land or stormy seas

Words, you know, are regional
They similar to seeds
When they emerge from babe or soil
You glimpse the paths life leads

Our world is global in many ways
People, plants, ideas, thoughts
English full of foreign words?
American English is British ersatz!

Even with our deep deep roots
We are fragile. We are frail.
We are NOT in cahoots
Hoping to see others fail.

Let me welcome and embrace
Those who do not sound like me
Or look like me or think like me
We’re still similar at our base

This weeks W3 Challenge was to explore the theme: Beneath the Surface.

Write in any form, but keep your poem to 20 lines or fewer.

I started with one idea for a poem — but then it took me in another direction entirely. Like a seed blown with the wind.

William Shakespeare, in Merchant of Venice, wrote these words spoken by Shylock:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh?
if you poison us, do we not die?
and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

I agree up to the last line. I do not want revenge.

There’s a scene in Searching for Bobby Fischer where the chess teacher is telling the boy, Josh, that he has to hate his opponent and Josh says, “But I don’t hate them.” The instructor says, “Well, you’d better start.”

No, no — he had not better start.

We need to look for commonalities, not ways to win.

poetry

Cuppa

Sally10 Comments

Cuppa
Hands curve around mug
Smell of java, swirl of cream [sigh]
Pink sunrise
One warm sip, this new day begins
The breakfast of champions:
Coffee

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge:

Write a Cameo poem—a tiny, distilled moment—on any theme you choose.

Form:

  • 7 lines;
  • Syllable count: 2 / 5 / 8 / 3 / 8 / 7 / 2;
  • Imagery is essential;
  • Minimalism is encouraged
Life · people · poetry

Overheard

Sally15 Comments

Overheard
Malicious whispers
Between two
Co-workers
My heart grew cold at their words
Squeezing in my chest

Breathing stopped
Blackness obscured sight
My fists clenched
And unclenched
Thoughts swirled like a tornado
Unholy and wild

Office chair
Calmed me in this storm
I held on
Took a breath
Straightened my back and went out
“I heard what you said”

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge: to write shadorma poems.

The shadorma is a compact Spanish syllabic form built from a six-line stanza with a strict syllable pattern: 3 / 5 / 3 / 3 / 7 / 5 (26 syllables total). It is typically unrhymed, and a poem may consist of a single stanza or a series of stanzas.

For this challenge, the theme is Sensory Details.

Write a close-up study of a single inanimate object or a very specific moment. Think small and focused rather than narrative or expansive. The power of the poem should come from sensory observation—what can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, or felt.

Yes, this actually happened. It was a specific moment and I tried to write the sensory details of it.