Lend Me Your Ears:
Today is the day that Shakespeare died. Also, although there is no definitive evidence, based on his baptismal records, it seems to have been his birthdate as well.
Write a Shakespeare Poem.
Find a simple quote from Shakespeare and weave it into a poem. Use it as an epigraph. Or begin each line of your poem with one of the words of the quote. Choose a Shakespeare play and search for words and phrases in order to make a Found Poem. Write in iambic pentameter. Write a poem from the point of view of Lear’s Fool. Write a Shakespearean sonnet (look it up). Write a poem titled “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and go from there. Write about dying on your birthday.
Gratitude:
Circles of community
“Good morning. There is a small, but meaningful thing you could do today in the service of your long term goal. Do that thing and then celebrate your progress with wild abandon. This is how we cultivate our dreams with a gardener’s gentle diligence.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist
“Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it.” —Lisa Kleypas
“Decide to rise.
Lean in. Listen up. Closely.
It’s your soul speaking and she says,
Get UP! I need you. I want you. I am you. Choose me.
Lean in. Listen up. Closely.
Decide to rise.” —Danielle LaPorte
“What you are comes to you.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Poetry, indeed, has always been one of humanity’s sharpest tools for puncturing the shrink-wrap of silence and oppression, and although it may appear to be galaxies apart from science, these two channels of truth have something essential in common: nature, the raw material for both. To impoverish the world of the birds and the bees is to impoverish it of the bards and the biologists.” —Jane Hirschfield
“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” —Helen Keller
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
―Jalaluddin Rumi (Barks, trans.)
“We Are…
our grandmothers’ prayers,
we are our grandfathers’ dreamings,
we are the breath of the ancestors,
we are the spirit of God.”
―Ysaye M. Barnwell
Mockingbird Chronicles 