Category: poetry

Life · poetry

Bless This Mess

Sally2 Comments

Dear Lord,

Bless this mess
I’ve no need to impress
Anyone

I am
Who I am
Who I am

Life has
Too much stress
Why should I guess
Or obsess
Over what possess-
ions
Someone else may want

Yes, yes —
I can address
This mess

I can assess
And progress
As I process
Decades of stuff

Nevertheless
dear Lord,
I need You
To bless
Me
As I move from mess
To less

I confess
My dependence
On You

Amen

This is my response to Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday‘s prompt: impress. I’m still working through a house full of stuff.

I have another five boxes ready to go out the door. Yay me.

Life · poetry

Overwhelmed

Sally2 Comments

I have been stressed with too much to do
The grass grew tall in the lawn
Mow? Me? Ugh, I thought
My get up and go was gone
I went to the barn, John Deere tire was flat
My hope fell — [boing, boing, boing]
I drove to town to do a few things
Came home, and found a friend mowing

This is a true story. Who knew that someone mowing my lawn could be a beautiful moment?

I’m challenging myself to find a beautiful moment each day for a week. This happened on Friday. Did someone do something nice for you this week? Was it a beautiful moment?

This also follows the W3 Challenge criteria for the week — all one syllable words except the last one, 5- 8 lines.

poetry

Inspired by a Card

Sally6 Comments

Hop hop hop
[CHOP CHOP CHOP]
Paws pause

Hark!
Ears prick up!
[Sniff sniff sniff]

Hmmm…
What is this?
What do I hear?

Hop hop hop
[CHOP CHOP CHOP]
“TIM-BER”!

This is my submission to this week’s W3 Challenge. Poet of the Week, Ange, challenged us to capture a dramatic moment in just a handful of lines — a storm breaking, a glass shattering, a door slamming, a sudden realization, or any instant where something changes sharply or unexpectedly.

You may write in any poetic form, with the following restrictions:

Your poem must be between 5 and 8 lines long. (or maybe 12, if they’re really short!)

Every single word in the poem must be one syllable long.

You are allowed one multi-syllable word — but it must appear as the very last word of the poem.

I was literally staring off into space — or, more precisely, absently staring at the box of paper recycling beside me. This card was on top — a Santa carrying a Christmas tree. I love rabbits; I’ve been observing lots of wildlife in my yard this week– and the poem was born.

Life · poetry

Because I Lack Chutzpah

Sally1 Comment

Prompt: List ten things you would say to ten different people in your life, if you had the chutzpah.

  1. Please stop coming by the house.
  2. Please come by the house and help me sort through all this.
  3. Call your doctor.
  4. Do your job.
  5. Should you be eating that?
  6. Stop being such a bitch.
  7. Do you remember that time twenty years ago when I came to you for help and you shut the door on me?
  8. As a Christian, how do you feel about warehousing people? What would Jesus do?
  9. Could I tell you my side of the story?
  10. I love you.

This is a response to one of the prompts in this week’s Writer’s Workshop.

Ten things I would say. Ten people. No chutzpah.

Here’s a poem with the names of those 10 people hidden inside in no particular order.

A hadj
I’m dreaming of a hadje
Anywhere
Let me look
Arles looks nice
(Van Gogh and all that)
Or a farm
Where I could grab udder teats
And milk a cow by hand
Buy ripe fruit and vegetables
Harvested that day
Or visit the Cape
And hope terrapins emerge
From brackish waters
Travel to South America
See pika
(thy love for small animals satisfied)
Flee
Annotate
Breathe deeply
Visit an adobe house
Wear a robe
Kahuna visit
Honestly, though,
The best ever
Is home
Always home

poetry

Exploring Roots

Sally3 Comments

An ancester named Zidsel is in my tree
’twas a new name to me
Looking through the smoke of generations past
(No — no one asked)
I am curious about my roots
And look for attributes
Genetically passed down my tree
So that I understand me

Who am I? Why am I the way I am?
It’s an anagram
I try to rearrange letters to see
Nature? Nurture? What’s the key?

Zidsel married Peder to whom she bore
Four children, maybe more
My great-grandfather Andreas was her son
He left Denmark — US life begun

I think, though, I would learn the most
Walking Zidsel’s Jutland coast
Seeing where she was born and died
Visiting the church where she was a bride
Finding old homes in the town of Varde
Imagining Zidsel in the yard
Nearly two centuries have gone by
Still, I’d like to give it a try

One of this week’s Writer’s Prompts from the Writer’s Workshop was to write a post based on the word smoke.

This poem is what grew out of that.

Well, that, and some poking around on Ancestry.

poetry

Beach Souvenir

Sally8 Comments

My mica flakes sparkle
In contrast to my blackness
I think that’s why you noticed me
In the water
At the provincial park
In Nova Scotia

You picked me up
And caressed my smoothness
Water is so patient
At smoothing away edges

Well, water and jostling
Jostling against other rocks
The daily tides make us all a little smoother
All a little less edgy

But at my very core
I always sparkle

This is my attempt at a Dinggedicht: a poem that enters so deeply into a thing that the thing seems to speak for itself through image, texture, movement, and sensation alone. That’s the W3 Challenge this week.

poetry

Shucking Peas

Sally11 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.