Today’s prompt is to write a character poem. I just started writing what came to mind, and suddenly I was writing about my cat Winky. She was a fae character.

When you think of me, she said,
think of how the sun seemed
to want to run its rays
through my fur like fingers.

She was a winsome creature,
more mermaid than cat, sitting
on her rock in the middle of the creek,
tail bobbing in the bubbling current,
tempting the minnows.

More fairy even than mermaid she was,
denizen of the worlds between,
liminal cat, walker-between-worlds,
always her own being, ephemeral.

Her magic was the airy kind, twinkling and
sparkling in the wind, a bird
which materializes out of a breeze,
a raven changing form to become a butterfly,
a piece of milkweed fluff making little
chiming bells as it wafts past.

Sometimes I see her in the dreamrealm,
a band of chortling fairy children
dancing on the green grass in her wake,
her body whole again, her wise eyes blinking
in greeting, her fur ruffled by fingers of sun.

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Gratitude List:

1. Gabe and Solly. I’m dog-sitting tonight for the sweetest pair of beagly boys.

2. Textures and textiles

3. Stories

4. Chocolate

5. Rilke

May we walk in Beauty!

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“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.” ―James Baldwin
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“Poets are kind of like—it’s a bad metaphor, but—canaries in a coal mine. They have a sense for things that are in the air. Partly because that’s what they do—they think about things that are going on—but partly because they take their own personal experience and see how that fits in with what they see in the world. A lot of people might think that poetry is very abstract, or that it has to do with having your head in the clouds, but poets, actually, walk on the earth. They’re grounded, feet-first, pointing forward. They’re moving around and paying attention at every moment.” —Don Share
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“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” —Toni Morrison
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“…Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.”
—from “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)” by Wendell Berry
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Morning Prayer
by Phillip Newell
In the silence of the morning
your Spirit hovers over the brink of the day
and a new light pieces the darkness of the night.
In the silence of the morning
life begins to stir around me
and I listen for the day’s utterances.
In earth, sea and sky
and in the landscape of my own soul
I listen for utterances of your love, O God.
I listen for utterances of your love.