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Posts from the ‘Poetry’ Category

Jul 13

Ordinary Sugar

“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” – Novalis

“Ordinary sugar coaxed to its epiphany.” – Amanda Gunn

The power of poetry to transform.
The dance of words to delight.
The pause to witness, acknowledge, embrace.
Ordinary to epiphany.
Daily life.
Satisfied in the weeding, watering, tending, growing.
May the prose of today give you peace, grace and joy.
Enter the poem.
Sometimes, sweet as sugar.

“She’d mastered,
in a life, how to grow
a winter meal, to till, to weed,
to water, to tend, learned how,
I hope, to be satisfied.” – Amanda Gunn

Ordinary Sugar poem here featured on Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama.

May 27

1 Comment

Each New Wave

“Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light and that the ocean which washes away all traces on the sand leaves us a new canvas with each wave.”― Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World

“Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.”

― Elizabeth Alexander

In corners
In conversations
In details
Poetry of life
Dailyness
Grace and gratitude
Awe and wonder
Enter and submerge in the ordinary
Sharpened senses
Letting in the glory and new light
A new canvas with each new wave.

“…now I know my capacity for awe
is infinite: this thirst is permanent,
the well bottomless, my good fortune vast.”― Elizabeth Alexander

Dec 12

Twinkle Twinkle

“Sparkle never goes out of style.” – Chrishell Stause

“When life gives you Monday, dip it in glitter and sparkle all day.” – Ella Woodward

A tilt, a turn for a different view.
Up and around.
Fresh start.
New week, new day, new hour.
Blank canvas, ready for some color, glitter, sparkle.
Art class is in session.
Beauty the muse.
A poem to be written, a song to be sung.
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle twinkle little star.
Cast light.

“The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.” James Gates Percival

Dec 9

baptism

“Love is not consolation. It is light.”― Simone Weil

“The river is everywhere.”― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

River of light
Ocean of hope
Well of love
Pay attention
Listen
Look
Longer
Deep dive into the waters
Coming to the surface again
Changed

“Hope is all that remains when concrete, tangible facts have scattered.”― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways

Dec 8

The Flow, Enter

“Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”― Richard Rohr

“Let me always be who I am, and then some.”― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems

Water moving through, over rocks
Waves ebbing and flowing
A rhythm
A symphony
An invitation to the natural flow
Cracks and crevices to oceans
Rivers and byways
Poetry and prose
Words to paragraphs
Winter to spring, back again
Underlying and transcending all seasons
Malleable and porous
Moving, unfolding, stretching, bending, pushed, pulled
Breaking yet not broken
Enter the flow
The full breath
Becoming, and then some.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”― Rainer Maria Rilke

Sep 16

To Labor and Wait

In the labor and the waiting, may you find joy throughout.
Alive in the living present.
Awake in this very moment.

Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”

Aug 17

In the Pause

“Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of the Earth’s greenings. Now, think.” – Hildegard of Bingen

“Rather than going for the high moment of drama, the high moment of the erotic, the high moment of the extraordinary, poetry will choose the small moment of pause just to look at what’s really happening, to look at a few layers deep and to let that small pause, that ordinary moment, open up with all the fullness of its being to us.” – Pádraig Ó Tuama

A pause
A glance
A moment
Embrace
Be held
Poetry in the ordinary

Jul 4

1 Comment

The Work

“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free… so other people would be also free.” – Rosa Parks

May we never cease striving for freedom for self and others.
In thought, word, action.
Connected. Generous. Kind.
Peace. Love. Light.
The work of a lifetime.

Keep A-Pluggin’ Away
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

“I’ve a humble little motto
That is homely, though it’s true,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
It’s a thing when I’ve an object
That I always try to do,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
When you’ve rising storms to quell,
When opposing waters swell,
It will never fail to tell,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.

If the hills are high before
And the paths are hard to climb,
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
And remember that successes
Come to him who bides his time,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
From the greatest to the least,
None are from the rule released.
Be thou toiler, poet, priest,
Keep a-pluggin’ away.

Delve away beneath the surface,
There is treasure farther down,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
Let the rain come down in torrents,
Let the threat’ning heavens frown,
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
When the clouds have rolled away,
There will come a brighter day
All your labor to repay,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.

There ‘ll be lots of sneers to swallow.
There’ll be lots of pain to bear,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
If you’ve got your eye on heaven,
Some bright day you’ll wake up there,
Keep a-pluggin’ away.
Perseverance still is king;
Time its sure reward will bring;
Work and wait unwearying,—
Keep a-pluggin’ away.”

Jul 2

1 Comment

Illumination

“Beauty is the illumination of your soul.” – John O’Donohue

Wherever you are, wherever you wander today, may beauty be your companion, light your friend, joy your spirit.

On Beauty
by Kahlil Gibran

“And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall your find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and the injured say, “Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.”
And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”

The tired and the weary say, “Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”

At night the watchmen of the city say, “Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.”
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, “We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.”

In winter say the snow-bound, “She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
And in the summer heat the reapers say, “We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not in the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

Jul 1

1 Comment

Sky Song

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”
― Hafiz

A canvas
A possibility
An opening
An invitation

To bigness
To expanse
To dance
To delight

Composition
Rhythm
The poetry of a summer’s day coming to a close.
Lighting up more than the sky.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)
by William Shakespeare

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

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