poetry on demand

September brings a new beginning, the start of a new year, my own birthday near to the high holidays, days when the gates swing open, and the book of life is ready to be written in, again.

It is also 4th Street Fair of the Arts & Crafts in my hometown of Bloomington and the Spoken Word Stage and Poetry on Demand. Tony sets up manual typewriters and perfectly squared 5 x 8 pieces of paper and away we go. People come up and order a poem, they might share a word, a favorite animal, a color, name. I give myself five minutes to catch a thought or phrase, an image or maybe even a line. Then type it out as fast as I can.

Little kids come and stare at the machines, their parents explaining the ancient typewriter, the way fingers hit keys and the keys are stained with ink and the striking of the raised letter on the key leaves its mark on the paper.

Some people like you to read the poem to them, others prefer to read it to you, They come with a phrase and leave with a poem. A wisp imprinted in indelible ink. The intangible made tangible, ready to turn to air again.

Two young sisters, Lia,  2 and Claire 4, asked me for poems, well their mom asked me at their request. They were too shy.  Lia showed me her dress, sky blue and filled with birds in flight. Her mom explained birds were her favorite thing, along with swinging as high as she could so she could be in flight. When I asked Claire what she loved she smiled a bit of a smile, unzipped her sweatshirt to reveal a ballerina in motion. Two young girls who each flew in their own way. Lia and Claire left holding their poems close.

It was so much fun to write them. Write me about San Francisco, a poem for my baby whose name is James and loves to spin barefoot in the rain, a poem about the way the weather changes, one for my friend.

I look up to grab an image, maybe a line, then type. I pull the page from the typewriter, sign my name and give it away. I can never remember any of the poems but the people that asked for them, the delight in writing and giving them, that is what remains.

 

 

 

 

poetry

Outside the day has turned to cold gray rain and spring rolled back to a late winter sky. But oh the light. the light against the tender April green.

it is NAPOWRIMO: National Poetry Writing Month and the challenge is a poem a day everyday of April. It is a joyful challenge, imbued with ease and release. Not that its easy per se but that its fun. Because every poem is just that – another poem for another day, a draft, a free write, an expression.

Visit http://www.napowrimo.net where each day you’ll find a featured poet (one of our group is today’s poet), a poem in translation and a prompt. Try it out. Why not…I share each day’s poem with a group of writing friends. We respond to each other by echoing back a line or two from each other’s poem. No critique, no revisions just breathing out and breathing in words as the weather swirls and changes, moving closer toward the warmth that’s coming and the cold we thought we left behind.

Today’s prompt – write a bot a flower:

Lavender
Somewhere there is a field of lavender
undulating in the wind that descends
with dusk. The soft musk of scent
releases as the small flowers are crushed
by the hooves of deer crossing wood to wood.
Already the sky has turned a bruised mauve
a violet hue, a red sun brushes the tree line
everything is cloaked in light
the disappearing deer, the lavender
the tender green of newly leafed branches.
Night darkens from the east
even as the moon rises
even as the stars appear.

 

 

 

What I learned about being still

1. It is not lying around
2. It is not maintaining one position
3. It is not counting breaths
   1. although counting breaths helps to get to a certain kind of stillness
4. It is not abut mantras,
   1. although repeating a mantra helps to quiet the busy rambling thoughts
5. You can’t be still when you are trying to be still because then you are so busy with the trying that there is no stillness.
6. Think about when someone tells you to relax and every muscle across your shoulders and down into the arches of your feet tense. Or perhaps you just become aware of the tension and then tense more at the idea of having to relax . Its not until you let go the idea of relaxing that you do relax.
7. It has nothing to do with giving up or giving in.
8. But it has everything to do with surrender,
   1. as in letting go of resistance and breathing through the heart.

I got still yesterday, really still. I sat in front of the fire just as the rain turned to snow and I could see out both sides of my house, north and south. I watched the world go from gray to white.  I was stilled. It was magic.

Weeding

Weeding.

Wishing Time Away

The light belies the cold. Even with six inches of snow on the ground, even with temperatures barely rising above 20 F there is no doubt that we are moving toward Spring. Inexorably moving forward, constantly turning the present into the past.

I hear people wishing time away all around me; wanting winter to be gone, wanting the day to be over, wanting it to be the weekend already. I usually don’t say anything but I am thinking be careful, don’t push away this day, this week, this season. It will be gone soon enough.

I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna, but I am acutely aware that time is such a fleeting thing. Our measure of it so subjective that it is only when we look back over a much longer swath of it then that which lies ahead do we really gain any perspective. I don’t want to wish any of it gone. I want to slow everything down, see it more clearly – the subtle shifts of color, the inflections in a song, hold a bit of beating wildness between my palms.

Some years ago in answer to a question of how I should move forward a wise friend of mine said I should sit still. I looked at her incredulously and then decided to try it. For a week I didn’t take any action. I watched the situation and observed myself. Slowly but surely the dilemma became clear as did my response to it. Sure, there are moments we have to act quickly and with decisiveness but if there is enough stillness around them it becomes much easier to discern which is which.

Last night just before bed I stepped out beyond the porch and looked up. Only in the very cold can the stars be that bright. Only snow can reflect back the moonlight with that thin and fleeting clarity. Let spring come as it will. Daylight is gaining with each revolution and in the meantime the snow is gleaming.

Hoosier Landscape in Snow

Hoosier Landscape in Snow.

Back Home Again…

I have been home for four days following our two week sojourn in Peru. It was a truly wonderful trip in many aspects, not just the places we saw, or the people we met, but also the way that travel manifests into an interior journey. Every landscape contains multiple vistas, every geography complexity.

I am glad to be home carrying the experiences of the trip with me into a new year. I have returned with a simple structure to my day and an appreciation for my home, friends and family that is like a deep sigh, integral to breath.

On the way into town this morning to meet with my Thursday writing companions there was, on this glorious late summer still verdantly green morning, a momentary rend in the fabric of the air around me. Cresting a hill I felt the absence of two of my dear friends so clearly that my breath caught as my eyes filled with tears. Judy passed over four years ago, and Susan just last year and still I miss them, often in a quiet way but on occasion, when my heart is wide open I will feel them gone like a wallop or as if I have taken a heavy fall to earth. A piece is missing from the sky.

I wrote this for Judy and then shared it recently at Susan’s yahrzeit, it seems somehow all connected with travel and wonder, and coming home.

Daylight’s last hour is soaked sweet with mowing,

the sky swirls, ravine and stream bend toward lake,

the sharp yellow tinge of marigolds

the silent wings of butterflies

All remind me how much I miss you.

 

Somewhere in the midst of children’s arms, biscuit crumbs,

alarm clocks, murphy’s oil soap, Friday night roast chicken,

honey drips on counters, snapshots on the fridge,

the ordinary became extraordinary.

 

The mark of days, the heft of time, the light

falling out of heaven, even before you died.

I began to keep a list of graces:

 

the butterfly caught all night on the screened in porch

clinging as close as possible to sky

iridescent wings skimming the scoop of my palms.

 

I carried it outside, opened my hands and it lifted

blue tipped wings into blue air, wings,

no different then prayer, fragile, thin as time.

 

Viaje

I am having coca tea just off the plaza in Ollantaytambo . We have been traveling 5, or is it 6 days and therein lies my point. Time changes when you change your view of time , it is in the short run malleable and in the long run finite and in between we occupy its cris-crossing lines.
In The World. Cafe the wifi is excellent and out the door the cobblestone street runs into a fortress constructed by the Inca in 1500 the giant stones fitted in such a way as to withstand earthquakes – though of course it wasn’t earthquakes that weakened the empire.
Is all history a series of conquests? How does time expand or contract on stone and language symbols and stars.
Dn if I know- though my first night in the Andes I woke from a dream in the quiet deep dark where sitting on a chair I was ascending towards the silver light of moon.

Dreaming

Last night in my dream I saw a glacier out the window. It invited me to walk on it, it’s name was murphy’s glacier. When I turned from the window the floors momentarily reflected sky then turned back to honey knotted wood. I balanced along a floorboard and came into another window. From there it was all sea, sea as blue, as blue as memory.

A profundity of gray under the surface both frightening and inviting. I catch myself from falling, grasp the window ledge, swing to the bed, beguiling in its illusion of comfort. I could dream away an entire week.  Sea and ice. I wonder if salt water freezes and remember the ice floes in the great northern expanses, the decreasing solidity, glimpse of a lost polar bear. What then of tears? Is the ocean full of god’s sadness or is it just all of humanity weeping? Death lurks out beyond the breakers. Where it quiets. We pay more attention to the waves, but it’s the depth we should study. The currents pull on us, the tides shape the shoreline.

There is an ocean inside us as well, full of reefs and sudden depths, Marked by corals I have never wanted to dive, snorkeling, looking down from the safety of the surface even as my breath catches with the possibility of falling. The windows reflect the changing sky, diffused, streaming, bright, wavering through shadow. Like the patterns of leaves or fireflies caught in the dusk. Then finally there is one great room with windows on the sea and a door to the mountains, where time and light merge.

 

 

A question of balance