Gratitude List:
1. The many fine, intelligent, and loving teachers I have had in my life. Today, I remember Myron Dietz who taught me Anabaptist History, and who died this weekend.
2. Oatmeal
3. Shoo-fly pie
4. Rainy mornings
5. Getting back into the schedule
May we walk in Beauty!
The prompt is to write a poem based on “It was a dark and stormy night,” but to substitute my own adjectives. I’m not entirely sure what this is about, but I’m still working out the dream. Where does a pacifist find such visceral scenes of violence?
It Was a Vast and Inescapable Night
It was a vast and inescapable night.
The ghost in the attic had called his benediction
down the stairs–“Get out of here!” he’d said
as cheerily as usual, which is to say, not a whit.
The Night Mare whinnied in my ear,
“I have a nice little gallop planned for you tonight.”
She promised me she’d take it slow to start,
and show me deeper pools than usual.
I’d learn new meanings of my name.
The man was weeping when I shot him in the head
although he knew, like me, what was required.
It was myself I shot, of course, so loss and fear
and grief compounded with the guilt I felt,
the trembling gun still steaming in my hand,
and a body waiting for discreet disposal.
“I have done this work before,” I told my shadow steed,
“The murder. Culpability. The hiding of the body.
But in past dreams I was the victim, not the agent.”
Last time, my life was vastly changed.
I wish I could say that the sun sprang forth
into morning with a hearty shout,
that I leaped out of my bed,
my new name burning in the air above me.
But days have passed and the curmudgeonly ghost
still treats me more rudely than I deserve.
My Shadow Mare has left me to wander
the dream meadows darkly and in silence.
I wear my new name around my neck
in a small leather pouch.
I have yet to check it, to see it,
to listen for its colors in the bright day.
No prompt yet this morning, and I have to go help get ready for the second Thanksgiving feast.
We’ve been playing gnomes again this weekend. For a while, I had a dragon egg incubating there in the center of the labyrinth where the Queen is standing (in violet robes). Then someone else needed the gems to make a gem mine, so I used the rocks to make a pretty excellent spiral.
Gratitude List:
1. That sunrise: stripes of tangerine and violet, and a faint glow of cobalt shining through.
2. Photos of friends from far away appearing on my news feed this morning. It feeds my spirit.
3. Time to play with the kids.
4. How a good stretch opens up breathing spaces inside.
5. Meditative drawing.
May we walk in Beauty!
Prompt: Write a leftovers poem.
What you have is the residual,
the leftover, the new guiding principle:
When all is said and done the finest morsel
may be in the doggie bag
awaiting your next meal.
Don’t underestimate the power
of the second day’s feast,
the way memory seasons the taste
with her own sweet-savory-sweet,
how the sharp edges of solitude
define the shape of intimacy.
Gratitude List:
1. That streak of orange fox, lithe and muscular, that raced across our path yesterday morning while we were on the way to Thanksgiving dinner.
2. Laughing together
3. Singing together
4. Eating together
5. Moments of solitude, too.
May we walk in Beauty!
May your baskets be overflowing.
Today’s prompt is to write a luxury poem.
Today, whatever you do,
take a moment to
luxuriate in love.
Gratitude List:
1. Taking a day to acknowledge gratitude.
2. Reason and logic
3. Magic and mystery
4. Honey and lemon tea
5. You. Thank you for being in my life.
May we walk in Beauty!
Today’s prompt is to write an echo poem. This is a gift. I have been frustrated this month with the way I have struggled to settle back into my voice. I know that writing a poem a day means that many will be junk, but I can’t seem to find the threads of myself in my writing this month. Two days ago, I felt it again, that sense that I was in the poem, finally. And yesterday, I desperately wanted to hold it, but it just unraveled.
But today, the prompt is to write an echo poem. He suggested that an echo might be a re-vision of an earlier poem, or perhaps a response to an earlier poem. I am trying to work out both of those–to echo Monday’s poem and to revise yesterday’s. I think I have almost accomplished it. It’s going to need some more revision work, but it’s definitely finding its way.
Love, she leads me out in the street,
leaving History muttering to herself
in the corner booth of the cafe.
“How can we fix her?” I ask, but Love
is silent. She points her finger down the street,
where sun is streaming golden through the leaves
falling from a yellow maple. “Don’t you just–”
she asks, “love that?” And Yes fills me,
and a shining thread stretches golden
from us to the tree. “And that?” She points
to children racing higgledy-piggledy down the sidewalk.
Laughter echoes off the walls. I nod and see
the glimmering thread between us.
A tired-eyed mother carrying her child. Yes.
Pigeons fighting for a crust of bread.
Pigeons, yes. Bread, yes.
A self-assured pup pulling his woman on a leash.
Dog. Woman. Her violet eyes. The shifting shades
of red and russet in her woven stole. Yes, and yes,
and yes again. And yes to the man sleeping on the grate,
and the girl who has brought him a cup of steaming coffee.
A glittering web fills the square, shifting in the sunlight,
quivering in the breathing spaces between us all.
“Ah!” I sigh. I see it now. “This is how
we untangle History
from her self-repeating cycle!
Cast the web and revel in its shine!”
But Love is not yet smiling.
“There!” She points to a battered crow,
holes in the fringes of its wings,
winging home from warring with an owl.
“Even that,” I say. “It is the way of crows,
of owls. I love the crow.” The web is cast
between us. Voices rise as we pass
through shadows, marching feet in lock-step.
Love points–“And those?”
Like the crows, perhaps, it is the way
of sheep to follow wolves. And yet,
the web has faltered slightly,
gone grey and wispy, sagging,
but intact. I hear History whispering,
“Inevitability, Sister.” Still, my heart
can see around the edges, hold the strands.
I have done this work before.
But Love points again, this time
to the leader himself, the leering
lying demagogue, leading the sheep
to their doom, to ours. A babbling buffoon–
The web is falling, tangling around me.
“And this one?” Love looks on, solemn-eyed:
“I think you see that here is where your work begins.”
Gratitude List:
1. Tabula rasa. Sometimes you get a do-over on a clean sheet.
2. Binge-watching The West Wing.
3. The goldfinches twittering in the sunlight.
4. Sunlight.
5. Sleeping in. My body let me sleep until 6, and then I managed to doze until after 7. Glorious. I might take a nap, too.
May we walk in Beauty!
Write a Love/Anti-Love Poem. I am struggling with my lack of love for the purveyors of violent and xenophobic rhetoric, so that’s where I went today.
To practice lovingkindness
includes that tiny word
that stops me up every time.
Most, perhaps.
But all?
I can love the tangerine sunset
glowing upward onto aquamarine cloud.
I can love the orange orb as it falls
below the hills to my west,
and its ghostly echo the moon,
sailing behind a bank of gray to east.
The curling wisteria I can love,
and the earnest eyes of the fox kit.
My heart reaches upward, fiercely loving
the starlings in their whirling dance.
But so many layers lie between me
and love for the leering buffoon.
See, the language, even,
has to peel away,
and then anxiety’s rising tide
that eats away at the beach
of compassion.
Turn the next page, and everything
is colored by impotent rage.
How can I cast the line out of this tangle?
Today’s prompt is a Two-fer: Write a Love Poem/write an Anti-Love Poem. I am going to take the prompt with me on the journey today and write the poem later.
Gratitude List:
1, Getting the work done.
2. Anticipating the break.
3. Knitting. Knotting. Holding it all together.
4. Lovely words: Radiance. Brilliance. Cozy. Meandering. Love
6. Abundance. I didn’t know what I was going to write on this one until I accidentally numbered it 6. Abundance.
May your day be Brilliant.
Brewer’s prompt for today is to write an apology poem. My friend Natasha, who writes the blog The Year of Black Clothing, introduced me to the Ho’oponopono, a traditional Hawaiian ritual of forgiveness. There are four sentences in the process, sentences which are meant to transform the person speaking as well as to bring healing to the situation.
Apology to the World
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.
~~Ho’oponopono
For taking more than my share.
For closing my eyes and my ears.
For talking over your pain.
For telling you how it should be.
For assuming you were my enemy.
For ignoring your story.
For belaboring the point.
For walking away.
For becoming helpless with worry.
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.
Gratitude List:
1. Dawn and sunset.
2. Yesterday’s stories. Dreams. Mystery. Healing.
3. Yesterday’s songs.
4. Yesterday’s work.
5. Today’s possibilities.
May we walk in Beauty!
Today’s prompt is to write a poem titled: “Waiting for (blank).” I don’t want this to be inevitable. I am writing out of my anxiety tonight.
Waiting for History
Waiting for History to repeat herself
is turning me into a statue of salt.
She sits next to me in the cafe,
stirs a load of sugar into her brew:
“It takes the edge off the inevitability,”
she tells me. “Inevitability is bitter, Girl.
It twists my gut into knots.”
She pours the cream,
sloshing it all over the counter,
and grabs a scone from her plate.
Her elbow sends the coffee mug
careening to the counter’s edge.
“I knew that would happen,”
she says, waving her butter knife
a little too close to my face.
I want to grab her, yell,
“Slow down a minute, Hon.
Relax. Take your time to settle in.
Concentrate on what you’re doing
right here in this moment,”
but she seems to be reading my mind.
“Impossible,” she blurts,
scattering crumbs across the counter top.
A dollop of jelly plops off her scone
and into her coffee. “I can’t slow down,
can’t settle, can’t give you time
to catch your breath on this one, Babe.”
Outside, snow curls out of the mist,
and voices call out sharply.
I’ve heard them all before:
Protect the Fatherland.
Eliminate the immigrants.
This is the time to show our
strength, to flex our iron arm.
“It’s beginning,” says History,
one elbow in the puddle of coffee,
the other in the wayward jam.
“I’ve heard it all before, Girl.
It’s the same damn grind,
over and over again.”
I sip my coffee black.
“Inevitability, Sister.”
She draws out the syllables
and hands me the cream.
Mockingbird Chronicles 