Tag: poem

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry

Explain

Sally2 Comments

Hey — do you
Understand
What this is?
Please expand

My knowledge!
My small brain
Cannot grasp
(all in vain)

Mystery
And You are
Conundrum
Far afar

Yet You are
Also near —
In my dreams
You appear!

But I am
So perplexed
Please tell me —
What comes next?

So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.”
John 16:18

I love this confession by the disciples — “We don’t know what he’s talking about.”

And I love even more that Jesus didn’t force them to ask the question. He knew what they were wondering and tackled it, explaining to them what He meant.

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry

Desire

Sally3 Comments

Dear Lord God,
Do I miss
The questions?
What is this

That I want
Most? Am I
Afraid to
Ask You? Why?

Yet You ask,
Sally, do
You want this?
Though You knew —

Long before
Your query –
You’ve known I’m
Too weary

To even
Realize
How good You
Are — and wise

Do you want to be healed? John 5:6

This is one of my favorite exchanges in John.

We’re introduced to a man who has been an invalid for 38 years. Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be healed?” which is a simple yes or no, but his answer is haunting and heart-breaking — “Sir, I have no one…”

So Jesus heals him.

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry

Condemn

Sally9 Comments

High-minded
People may
Make others
Shrink away

Feeling not
Enough, not
Worthy, an
Ugly thought

“Neither do
I condemn
You.” Peace in
The mayhem.

John 8:10 Has no one condemned you?

This is one of my favorite stories — the woman caught in adultery, the scribes and the Pharisees who want to stone her, and Jesus there, writing in the dirt.

Don’t you want to know what he was writing? I do. I think about that question a lot.

But we’ll never know. We only know that He didn’t condemn this woman when it felt like the whole world was.

Pretty amazing.

How can I be like that?

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge.

poetry

Love is

Sally14 Comments

Constant
Begun with sleep loss
Cleaning up bodily fluids
Listening
An umbrella of security
The gift of time
Hard work

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week given by Murisopsis.

She asked us to write a Cameo whose form is Heptastich (7 lines), Syllabic (2-5-8-3-8-7-3), and unrhymed. Also, she wanted the theme of love and added “try to incorporate some other kinds of love for a change.”

My youngest daughter called the other day because she had food poisoning or a stomach bug or some such thing. She spent the night on the bathroom floor.

Had she been closer, I would have gotten her ginger ale and saltine crackers, and taken care of cleaning out the throw-up bucket for her.

I’ve done it.

Love is cleaning up vomit.

One time, when I was taking care of my father, he collapsed on the way to the bathroom and wet himself quite thoroughly. We called the ambulance, but he wanted to be presentable when they arrived so I helped clean him up and got him dry clothes.

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” he said, over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

Love is cleaning up urine.

My oldest daughter is expecting her first child. I remember as a young mom going to a baby shower for another new mom. We were all supposed to write advice for the new mom on little cards. Everyone write things like, “Tell your child you love him/her every day,” or “Live, laugh, love.” I had just had a horrible outing with my baby, where he did one of those poopy things that up his back and down his leg and got all over me when I tried to change him. We were an hour away from home. For the baby shower I wrote, “Always have a spare change of clothes in the car for you and your baby.” I was dead serious. It drew a lot of laughter at the shower.

Love is cleaning up poop that’s everywhere.

Can I say here that love isn’t candlelit dinners? It isn’t fun vacations. It isn’t bouquets of flowers or pretty jewelry. It’s the nitty gritty stuff of life.

Is that the kind of love you were talking about Murisopsis?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry · questions

Authorities

Sally7 Comments

What gives a
person auth-
ority?
Yes, whence doth

Command come?
A strong arm?
Lifted chin?
Wisdom? Smarm?

Who are these?
Why do their
Words carry
Anywhere?

Yet we yield
To what they
Say, believe.
We obey

And turn blind
Eye, deaf ear.
Instead of
Faults, we hear

What we want
To hear. We
nod and don’t
Disagree.

Authori-
Ty. Poo-poo.
Let me think.
Same for you.

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge. These verses inspired today’s poem.

John 7:26 …Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?

John 7:48 Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?

When it became more and more evident that there was something different about Jesus, the common people began looking around to see what the “authorities” thought of him — hence the questions — hence my poem. But they were AFRAID to say anything — John 7:13 Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.

But, between you and me, this particular topic is a sore spot with me. Depending on what news source you watch or read, you will have very different views of what is going on in the world from those who watch the other news. We need to be a THINKING people, who investigate the truths and falsehoods of what we’re being fed.

poetry

Delilah

Sally14 Comments

My darling,
Much better than quarreling
Is this: I will stroke your hair,
Swear

Devotion
To you while you’ve no notion
(Have you?) of whose side I’m on.
Yawn

My pretty;
Sleep on my lap. I pity
Your great surprise when you wake.
Take

Care, dumb thing.
Out of the strong came something.
Sweet fool, you yielded to me
Key

Expertise
That I might put you at ease
And take from you that which God
[prod]

Had conferred
On you. Soon the deed’s occurred —
Come take the hair of this mutt!
Cut!

The W3 prompt for this week was to write an ekphrastic poem about the Rubens’ painting of Samson and Delilah.

The more I looked at the painting, the more I disliked Delilah. She’s so false. What did Samson see in her? Well, I think that’s pretty clear in the painting, too.

This is an Irish form I’ve used before: deibide baise fri toin. Syllable count for each quatrain: 3-7-7-1. Rhyme scheme: aabb. The first two lines rhyme on two syllables, and the last two rhyme on one.

The poet of the week gave an additional challenge of including a line from Samson’s riddle: “Out of the strong came something sweet.”

poetry · prayer

Lost Prayer

Sally11 Comments

Dear Barbara,
Remember when
We used to pray
And say amen

To all of our
Troubles and cares
Passing them on –
Gone – to “One Upstairs”

Who heard our words
Read our mettle
Enclosing us
Thus to settle

And face what came–
Oh! Life was hard
Especially
Yours. See — one card

Then another —
Life dealt you crap
Death, illness, hell
Fell in your lap

Week after week
We bowed our heads
We wept, we prayed
Life frayed to shreds

Why did we stop?
I don’t recall
Did we give up?
Our cups to fall

And break, as did
Our friendship? I
Wish I knew what
Shut that door. Why?

Why do people
Move on from God,
Friends, prayers, tears?
Fears? Fatigue? Fraud?

I am a fraud
Yes, yes. That’s true
But we did pray
A day or two

I was out for a drive with a friend the other night, and suddenly I recognized the landscape, the roads, the buildings. It had been years since I had driven out there but I used to meet weekly to pray with a friend. She lived out there.

We stopped meeting rather abruptly some 20 years ago — and I don’t remember why. I don’t remember a falling out. I don’t remember a lot of things from those years. They were so stressful.

But the stresses in my life were miniscule in comparison with hers.

This poem came out of the hashing around of those memories.

I need to add that faith failures — the doubts, the fatigue — they are all MINE, not hers. Pretty sure, anyway.

poetry

Oh, to be a flower

Sally19 Comments

“Please select
Me!” She wanted to direct
The gardener as he scanned,
Hand

Already
Full of flowers, gaze steady.
He looked for one final bloom.
Gloom

Just settled
Over her. Her gold petaled
Head drooped in an oh-so-sad
Bad

Way. Downcast,
Rejected, again outcast,
Passed over. But then he stopped
Dropped

His pruner
“I wish I’d seen you sooner,”
He said to her. “You are sweet!
Meet

Your sidekicks.”
[snip!] She joined the spray, transfixed
By the beauty around her.
“We’re

Delighted
You can join us!” She sighted
A welcoming rose and mum.
“Come!”

This is for the W3 challenge this week. Heather (Sgeoil) challenged the participants to do a little personification. I had an idea for a flower being plucked from the garden for a bouquet (inspired in part by the bouquet that was on my bedside table when I stayed at my son’s house). My idea involved going in that sacrificial direction of losing life for the sake of something bigger. But, as you can see, it went in a totally different direction.

I wish I understood my own process.

AND — because I like Celtic forms, I went with a Deibide Baise Fri Toin, and Irish form with aabb rhyme scheme and syllable count of 3-7-7-1 for each stanza. The first two lines rhyme on a 2 syllable word and the last two lines rhyme on one syllable.

poetry · Uncategorized

Letter from a Yellow Pen

Sally5 Comments

Dear Writer,
I know my ink is lighter,
Sometimes hard for you to see.
Be

Fair, okay?
I can and I will display
Brightness in the words you choose!
Lose

Your bias.
I’m asking that you try us —
Lemon, saffron, mustard, maize —
Gaze!

Your choices
(Which can vary like voices
From soprano down to bass)
Grace

Your paper
In shades that play and caper
Like shards and flickers of light —
Right?

Use yellow,
My dear reluctant fellow!
You will find that you can see
Me.

Love,
Your yellow pen

This is an Irish poetic form called Deibide Baise Fri Toin. 

The poem is made up of quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme. Syllable count 3-7-7-1. Lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word; lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word.

The prompt on January 4 from the 64 Million Artists creativity challenge was to write a short letter to yourself from the perspective of an object that you use, or maybe misuse everyday. Honestly, I NEVER use my yellow pens. I have a basket full of a variety of pens in a variety of colors.

My favorites are brown, green, grey, and blue — earth, ocean, sky.

My least favorite is red. It feels too corrective — probably going back to my school days.

I like yellow. I just can’t always see what I’ve written when I use yellow.

Did I use yellow on January 4? Heck, yes, I did!

My pen basket
family · poetry

Ichibon – Our First Cat

Sally12 Comments

“Can I have a little kitty?” I asked my dad one day.
My mother put me up to it; she knew what he would say.
When I had first asked her, she said, “You need to ask your dad.”
The thought of having NO kitten made me rather sad –
So in my simple six-year-old heart, I began to pray.

When I first saw those kittens, much to my dismay,
The lady said to ask my mom and I knew I must obey
So I asked my mom with every ounce of sweetness that I had —
Can I have a little kitty?

My father loved to tell this tale. I can hear him now portray
How this funny freckled blonde-haired girl stole his heart away
With such a simple question — and he would often add
“How could I say no to that?” Yes, he would be a cad
To deny his own dear daughter the joy that came with one “Okay”
Can I have a little kitty?

The cat’s name was Ichibon. We lived on an army base at the time, and the family with the kittens had recently returned from a stint in Japan. Ichibon means #1 in Japanese, and she was allegedly the first kitten born in the litter.

Ichibon was first in a long long string of cats in my life. Today, I have an obese cat who doesn’t understand that he’s supposed to be a working cat and taking care of the mice in this house — but that’s probably a poem for another day.

This is response to the W3 prompt this week:

Write a rondeau inspired by a childhood memory

  • 15 lines long;
  • Three stanzas:
    • a quintet (five-line stanza);
    • a quatrain (four-line stanza);
    • and a sestet (six-line stanza);
  • Rhyme scheme: aabba aabR aabbaR.
  • Refrain: L9 and L15
    • The refrain (R) is short;
    • The refrain (R) consists of a phrase taken from L1;
  • All the other lines are longer than R and share the same metrical length.