Who could have predicted that flame? On the same day water took the Titanic, who could guess that fire would claim the cathedral of Our Lady?
Or that the mosque on thrice-holy Temple Mount would on the same day see its courtyard catching fire? We want our works to last forever, our ships unsinkable, our mosques and temples and cathedrals proof against the ages, against the ravages of time.
We weep for beauty and reverence lost, tossed by water, by flame, into the void. And we stand, unified in our common horror, to gasp at the falling spire, to sing in the face of that which claims us all in the end.
Today’s Poetic Asides Prompt is to write a View Poem. As is so often the case, I have come to the end of the day tired and foggy.
The View from Here
Down the hill on Ducktown Road through the woods, the open view begins with a plush Persian rug of purple dead nettle and chickweed, glowing with the life force of spring, and dotted with golden dandelions.
Beyond, the peach tree blossoms are begin to open on the branches like pink popcorn, a few more each time we pass, and the ridge, darker behind the farms of our little valley, even that winter brown is is tufted with green and shining red.
It’s a cloud-watching day, with a Maryblue sky, and I think that if I could travel anywhere in the world to find a beautiful landscape, I might just come right here.
You need to brood, to hold the day-world deep, to creep through hallways and tunnels in buildings you half remember. Keep things in their rooms, hidden in hollows, behind oaken doors and up stairways, through arches and curtains, where they become something else, symbols of themselves, monsters and midwives.
You must step into the stream of the story, find peace in the threads of the tale that the smallest elf of your deepest self is telling you, sifting and shifting images, sliding pictures through your vision like an old-time stereoscope.
Do not try to remember. Look sideways, like you do at the Pleiades, which you can only see when you look beside them, and never directly. The memory of dreams requires just such a two-step, a soft and sideways focus, peripheral. Write them down. Don’t force sense upon them, but let them unravel onto the page.
Today’s Poetic Asides Prompt is to write a poem that is a dedication, or a poem with a dedication.
Thorn in My Side to my Gadfly
Here’s the thing: The outrage dissipates so much more quickly now. There’s the kick in the gut when I see your name there on the email, and I think, “Here we go again,” and then a moment of panic, another of anger, and then, this time. . .
I sat there just watching what was happening inside my head, expecting the roaring in the ears, the tunneling of vision, the white light blinking in the back of my brain. And there was nothing, really. And then, what I didn’t expect: gratitude. Quiet, twinkling gratitude, and steady purpose.
That shocked me. I’m so used to the exhausting fury, the worry and self-righteous indignation. But this time I may have begun to pass the test, to rest a moment in my breathing, then focus on my center, to enter–finally–a space where I can see myself, and you, and shift the focus of the attack.
The thing is: You have been a better teacher than you could ever imagine, and likely more than you intend, and I have been a less than willing student, too eager to defend my ego in the face of your attacks.
You’ve taught me to be curious about the fury that you send my way, to stay within my heart-space, even to offer grace in the midst of your rage. I have found safety that you cannot touch, your cages will catch me no longer. I’m stronger now, and I can hold the net you toss my way, and turn it to a golden thread.
Some trees develop friendships, they say, filling out their branches on the outer edges, criss-crossing the air between them with a fine hatch of lighter branches, creating two halves of a single crown.
When they took down the old poplar, seventy years old and ninety feet tall, and rot-wood spreading from its heart, half the sky in the hollow was revealed, its other half still obscured by sycamore, now lone and lopsided, missing half a crown.
Beneath the drive, buckled now by poplar’s knees, are their roots still entwined?
Gratitude List: 1. Green grass, blue sky, puffy white clouds, and pink trees. 2. The children playing outside together 3. Serendipity and synchronicity 4. Traffic was a breeze this afternoon. (I know this one seems petty, but it’s a really big deal to me. On a good day, I can get to school in 25-30 minutes. The ride home can top 45.) 5. The water is back on. We have not had water since Friday when the pump failed. The plumber is now my hero, and I told him so.
You have heard it said, though no holy book has said it, “You shall love the sinner, and you shall hate the sin,” which some have interpreted to mean that they shall cast away all whose love does not resemble their own. They have given themselves license to harass, to bully, and to goad.
But I say unto you: The world has had too much of hatred. You shall turn your eyes from the subject of sinning. You shall love whom the Beloved loves. You shall seek after love, watch for love as a gardener watches for tender shoots, and nurtures them, and breathes upon them.
You have no time for anything abstract as hatred. You shall be the Caretakers of love, the Beloved’s own gardeners, tending love wherever you see it, in whatever form it takes, nurturing bud to blossom.
Today’s Prompt on Poetic Asides is to write a Lucky Number poem. My thirteen lines have thirteen syllables each. I might call the form thirteen squared.
Thirteen white pebbles in a woven nettle basket. Thirteen striped feathers floating on the gentle spring breeze. Thirteen tiny minnows circling in a shallow creek.
You’ve drawn the Death card, which is also Transformation. One cycle is ending; another is beginning.
Ouroboros, Jormundgand, and Damballa Wedo: Whatever you call it, the World Serpent eats its tail, delineating a universe, shaping a world, separating the outer space from the inner space.
Don’t take no as your final answer. Don’t give up now. The hardest push comes just before the moment of birth. The final moment of surrender to the process is the moment that the light of the new world shines in.
Today’s Poetic Asides prompt is to write a poem on the subject of jealousy. I don’t know that I experience that particular emotion much. Perhaps I am not being honest with myself?
Though I would love to defy gravity with the grace of an acrobat or ballerina, how can I be jealous? For jealousy fogs the windows of appreciation, and pulls my soul’s feet downward just as surely as my physical body rests solidly on earth, and I want to let my spirit fly with those who can.
And how can I be jealous of the artist whose line is so eloquent that a single curve or bend can draw me to tears? I long to place my truths within the webs of line and color as great artists do, but jealousy would push me off the ladder I am climbing toward them in their lofty realms.
Sometimes I read a line of perfect thought in poetry or prose and think, “I wish I’d written that!” But even that distracts me from the beauty of the word, and pulls me out of that co-creative space wherein the writer tosses out a thread of meaning and the reader reels it in, and both are necessary for the literary process to be complete.
Oh, I get jealous of other people’s tidy spaces, their immaculate houses that never break down, their ability to get everything done in timely ways. But would I trade my life for theirs? Would I then be satisfied? Or would I ride out of that upgrade into the next, never learning to be content?
May I always remain unsettled enough that I continue seeking better ways, but may my days be filled not with wishing for another train, but with loving what is mine, and treasuring the marvelous gifts that others have and know and do.
After all is said and done, when you’ve won the battle, when you catch your breath and stretch your fingers to the sun,
will you still believe in all the words and songs that led you to your path? Will you remember all the guides who walked beside you in the lonesome days?
Will you praise the small coincidences of the wayside trees that brought you comfort, and the sort of incidental shining stones that made a trail for you to follow?
After the dust has settled, after the room has stopped spinning, after the dice have rolled the magic number, will you stumble onward blindly
in the noonday glare, or will you pause and rest a moment, give a knowing glance toward the river and the willows, the pebbles and the flaming trees of spring?
Will you sing a grateful poem to the day? Will you kneel? Will you build an altar? Will you dance? Will you pray?
Gratitude List: 1. Phoebe calling 2. Bluebird muttering 3. Fixing things 4. Water 5. Poeming
I drew this back at the end of February, when I finally began to feel that awful weight of winter shifting just the lightest bit.
Today’s prompt on Poetic Asides is to write a stolen poem. Here’s my attempt:
Poetry Prompt: Write a Stolen Poem
I stole this poem years ago, actually, from a shelf in a corner of that old book shop on a quiet street down by the river. Dust motes twinkled in shafts of sun which slanted through the windows.
I eased the leather-clad book from a high shelf. I thought I heard it whispering. My fingers tingled with its electric pull.
I knew it would contain treasures: words like glisten and linger, like numinous, mellow, meringue. I thought it might glow on the page, hum my name, offer me words to ponder: tendril, exquisite, winsome, wander. And words strong and feral, like flame, wild, and bramble, courageous, incarnate, sycamore.
I thought it might tell me how not to be afraid, how to not put so much stake in other people’s opinions, how not to trust the lure of the the easiest road.
It did not disappoint. I’ve kept it, concealed, waiting for the moment, the right invitation, to reveal it.
Mockingbird Chronicles 