Art by me and the AI. Robert Lee Brewer’s prompt today was to write a poem that begins, In the. . .
In the hard times, you could still hear the song.
In the skeleton days when all you could do
was to drop out of bed in the quiet dawn to pray,
even then, you could hear it, the gentle melody
underneath the jangling and dissonant voices
that clamored for attention in your head.
Even when your insides were displayed on street corners
for all to see, the hopeful notes floated around you,
small birds that only you could sense, like angels,
leading you through the chanting crowds.
In the house made of sunlight and bone,
where your spirit found shelter
after the ravening creatures of malice and spite
had picked your very soul clean of flesh and sinew,
there, in the liquid autumn air, the music expanded,
mending the breakage, tending the spaces
like cobwebs, repairing the breaches, weaving
the song through the aching gaps, declaring you whole.
Gratitude List:
- The calm and peace of Friday evenings
- That autumn slant of light
- Leaves drifting gently down
- I get by with a little help from my friends
- Music
May we walk in Beauty!
(Today’s quotations come in pairs that interact with each other)
“Both when we fall and when we get up again, we are kept in the same precious love.” ―Julian of Norwich
*
“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved–what then?” ―Carl Jung
*****
“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt
*
“If I had influence with the good fairy, I would ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
―Rachel Carson
****
“Your problem is you’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness.” ―Ram Dass
*
“In giving of yourself, you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.” ―Cesar Chavez
****
“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
―Eugene V. Debs
*
“I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too. Ma Joad: I don’t understand it, Tom. Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.”
―Tom Joad, from the movie Grapes of Wrath
Mockingbird Chronicles 