Gratitudes

Breath of the Goddess

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Gratitude List:
1.  Colleagues. I am grateful for colleagues who are truly concerned about the welfare and well-being of the students. Not just their academic performance, but the health of their spirit as well.

 

2. Glory clouds, sun rays shining down through
3. June is coming. I can taste it.
4. Witnessing a student who is usually quiet and reserved be one of the first to respond to a classmate in meltdown mode, with a gentle word and a hand on the shoulder. And seeing how the calm spread like a wave to the one in need.

 

 

5. How the scent of lilac and lily of the valley fills the hollow.

May we walk in Beauty!

 

 

Most Days

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Thursday Thoughts:
“You can learn to be lucky. It’s not a mystical force you’re born with, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities.” —Rob Brezsny
***
“There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough to pay attention to the story.” —Linda Hogan
***
“You choose to be a novelist, but you’re chosen to be a poet. This is a gift and it’s a tremendous responsibility. You have to be willing to give something terribly intimate and secret of yourself to the world and not care, because you have to believe that what you have to say is important enough.” —May Sarton
***
“There is indeed a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills, and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame and reinventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our time.” —Wade Davis, The Wayfinders
***
“. . .war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. . . . [E]very war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac. . . .

The essential job is to get people to recognise war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda.” —George Orwell

 

Closing Time

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The last poetry prompt of the month is to write a closing time poem.

The door stands ajar.
The curtain rises.
The window is open
and the screen is torn.

The moment has come
to escape the old ways
and enter into the new drama,
to dance down new pathways,
to fly toward a new horizon.

Escape!
Begin the Play!
Soar free!

That’s an exciting prompt for a Beltane Eve. May Day is about running through the door, barefoot and maybe naked, but completely unconcerned, willing to take the necessary risks to accomplish your dreams. What will you risk in the coming season? What “clothing” do you need to cast off in order to abandon yourself to your projects?

A Blessed Beltane season to you! May your dreams feed you.

Gratitude List:
1. Flicker on the ground at LMH this morning when we pulled in. We got to watch it for a full two minutes before it flew away into the morning sunlight.
2. On our walk this evening, swallows swooping low to get a look at us. I think there were both barn and tree swallows.
3. The smell of gill-over-the-grass after someone has walked on it. Smells like spring.
4. The smell of cow patties drying in a field. It transports me back in time, and suddenly I’m five-year-old Bethie walking home from Gwen’s house in the slanting sun of a late Shirati afternoon, the lake breeze playing in my hair.
5. Speaking of poop, I love the open-throated bark of a laugh that Joss gives when he hears a good scatological joke. Total delight, especially when his dad makes the joke.

May we walk in Beauty and Laughter.

Response Poem

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Today’s prompt is to write a response to one of the previous poems from the month. I chose my April 27 poem.

There once was a girl
who was so afraid of spiders
that when a web of song,
a web of prayer,
came floating to her
on a breeze, she ran
as fast as she could
in the other direction.

There once was a girl
who was so afraid of darkness
that when a quiet veil
of comforting shadows
fell about her,
she fell down in terror
and hid her head
until the staring sun
came out again.

There once was a girl
who was so afraid of heights
that when her friends
sang bridges that led
to safer meadows,
she could not unfreeze
her footsteps from the Earth
to flee toward the havens.

Whenever she ran from her fears,
they always caught her.
Whenever she froze in terror,
she found herself engulfed.
I would like to say she learned
to reach her hands toward her friends
and find her way home.

Gratitude:
I am grateful today for the concentric and interlocking circles of community in my life, for the people who keep their protective eyes on my children, who teach and mentor them and love them.

May we walk in Beauty!

Ride the Wave

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Today’s prompt is to write a poem titled __________ Wave.

Ride the Wave

If you watch closely
as it approaches
you can begin to feel
the energy enter your body
before the water
even takes shape.

Enter the sound and the color
before the matter engages you.

And suddenly you are part of it,
caught in the song of it,
bound in the curve and the crash
and the pull of the wave.

Gratitude List:
1. Speedwell and dandelion and grape hyacinth and violet and deadnettle. The little quiet beauties that catch your eye when you’re least expecting it. “Wake up now,” they say.
2. Spring in the air
3. People who put their souls and hearts into what they do. Art that is more than technical perfection, but is a reflection of humanity.
4. Getting some of the work done. Not nearly enough. But some. The load begins to lift.
5. Blooming. Flowers, children, teenagers, relationships, work, ideas.

May we walk in Beauty!

Singing Them Safe

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clover
Today’s prompt is to write a story poem.

There once was a girl
who could sing such a web
of fractured light
that the ones who came
to devour her children
fell to the ground
blinded.

There once was a girl
who could sing such a veil
of soft gentle darkness
that the ones who came
to harm her beloveds
lost their way
and forgot their names.

There once was a girl
who could sing such a bridge
of delicate stories
that all those she loved
could cross to safety
and live free of fear.

Gratitude List:
1. “You will be found.” My favorite line from the school’s current show.
2. Deadnettle and dandelions: purple and yellow
3. Making connections, webs, bridges
4. Poem in Your Pocket Day in Wrightsville. Always a delight.
5. Weekend

May we walk in Beauty!

All My Relations

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If I’m not mistaken, a yellow-bellied sapsucker has been visiting my willow.

Today’s prompt is to write a relationship poem.

Even the stinkbug
that you lift so gingerly
from the wall
and scoop out the window
into the night breeze

Even the small mouse
skittering over the counter

Even the forsythia
flashing golden
in the afternoon sun

Even the curve
of the cobalt bowl
which nestles
into your palms

Even the Mayapples
in the woodsedge

Even the geese on the pond
Even the fish
Even the spider
whose art is everywhere

Even the mantis
who looks you in the eye,
who are so much larger
but so much less fierce

Even the hawk
circling over the field
Even the wind in the branches
Even the groundhog
eating your spinach

All is at one with you
All is family
If you cannot say to the rabbit,
I am your sister. I am your brother.
If you cannot say to the sun,
I recognize you as one of my family,

If you cannot say to the oxygen
as it races into your lungs,
We are children together
in this great race of living,

Then you will always be
separate, isolated, alone.

Gratitude List:
1. The fire and energy of the young actors, singers, dancers of my school. They had a fantastic show tonight. All the pieces were good, but the one that will stick with me is the song, “You Will Be Found.”
2. A shining blue bluebird
3. An indigo sky, just before total dark
4. Green. Have I mentioned the green? I was beginning to feel like my soul could not breathe, but everything is finally going green, and I can breathe again.
5. The deep purple violets all over my yard.

May we walk in Beauty!

Argle-Bargle

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Bleeeeding

Today’s prompt is to choose a little-known English word and use it for a title. I chose two.

The Argle-Bargle of the Blatherskite
(meaningless babble of a chatterer)

I mean it when I say
that I mean what I say,
and I say what I mean,
which is to say
that I mean something.

You know you want to
want what you want
when you want it
and you know
you want it now.
Now you know it.

We’ve come this far
by coming to terms
because the terms
are endearing my dear

It’s not over ’til it’s begun
or so they say.
Red Rover, come over.
It’s over. It’s done.

Gratitude List:
1. Greeeeeeen!
2. The Deer of Skunk Hollow
3. Anticipating Oriole
4. This boy who is looking over my shoulder and conferring with me about my grammar
5. The way new poems rise

May we walk in Beauty!

Oaks

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Today’s prompt is to title the poem the name of a plant, and then to write the poem.

Oaks
(for the people who sit in their trees to stop the pipeline)

The women themselves are oaks
in this ocean of oak,
in these groves of trees–
Sycamore, Poplar, Pine–
riding their boats,
tiny houses high in the boughs of the oak trees.

Riding the waves of storm,
surfing the wind high up in the branches,
they have no safe port, no harbor,
no safe place to re-supply.
Below them, the sharks circle,
waiting for the first sign of weakness.
But their friends, too, have made a circle,
a web to hold the women who sit in the oaks.

The women are watching and waiting.

They are protectors.
They are the guardians.
They are trees and the mothers of trees.
They know the secrets of the acorn.
They know how long it takes an oak to grow.
They have the patience of mountains.

Gratitude List:
1. Warm spring weather
2. Spring breeze
3. Reading books together
4. The defenders of the earth
5. Magic

May we walk in Beauty!

A few weeks ago, I had a Facebook conversation with several friends about the books we loved as children because someone we loved read them to us. The conversation was brought on by a post by the author Kate DiCamillo, who wrote about her elementary school teacher reading her The Island of the Blue Dolphins. Kate DiCamillo is herself the author of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. On Friday, at the Kreutz Creek library book sale, I bought a copy of Edward Tulane. When Joss saw it, he said his Library teacher had read it to his class, and that it was one of his favorite books, and he said we were going to take a break in our reading of Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising in order to read it. We just finished reading it now, on the porch, and even though I knew what was going to happen, even though my heart had been broken and mended with Edward’s half a dozen times already, when the absolute perfect ending happened, I went to pieces and sobbed. Oh. It is exquisite. It is now one of my favorite books, too.

Holy Wind

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Screenshot2018-04-20at8.41.36PM
The prompt for today is to write a poem that uses a line from a poem I wrote earlier in the month.

This spiritwind, this holy breeze blows through
the hollow places of my spine,
the hallowed spaces of my bones,
through the stones of heart and kidney,
through the separated ribs,
through each molecule of blood like stars,
sparkling through the hallways
of the body, blowing down the strands
of DNA, of memory, of life force.

The Beloved blows through
with a shriving wind,
clearing the pathways
clogged by the debris
of addiction and twisted truths,
of laziness and wasted moments,
to free the caged, starving soul.

Gratitude List:
1. Earth Day chapel–everybody outside, looking at flowers and watching Mr. Sprunger fish, and petting the sheep, and making bird feeders, and listening to psalms and poetry, and learning to split wood.
2. Five deer appeared as we went outside for chapel, and ran across the hillside behind us.
3. Two phoebes were flitting in the saplings at the edge of the River.
4. This evening, playing Kube with the family as the sun began to go down.
5. The mockingbird is back and in full mockingbird mode.

May we ever walk in Beauty!