Lost Luck

Today’s prompt is to write a luck poem. I’m having fun playing with internal rhyme and watching how it drives the line forward, how it pushes into the meaning of the following line. It’s almost like putting a puzzle together, and almost like following a large willful dog on a leash.

Where do you go to find your lost luck?
Look where it settles in ditches,
and hitches itself into trees,
where it sees through the mists
into the distance and takes the long view.

Watch how it grew when you thought
you had bought the last morsel of hope,
how the rope which had bound you
dissolved from around you, and you
suddenly found yourself once again free.

Would you be here if not for the seeking,
the desperate pleading when all seemed so lost,
when all hope was tossed into the whirlwind,
the promises hindered, the heart’s desire stuck,
and then here you are, free to seek for fresh luck.


Gratitude List:
1. Student delightfully self-congratulating a Duolingo success: “Yes, Grrrl! You got it!”
2. This morning’s autumn mist on the fields between Marietta and Mt. Joy.
3. I never know what is going to draw a whole class into discussion. I try every angle I can, and sometimes, everyone is suddenly jumping in, on fire with ideas. Today was one of those days in our upper division discussion about My Antonia. They had had enough background already in social studies classes regarding “Manifest Destiny” (idea and painting) that even my quietest introvert pushed himself up out of his chair and came up to the front of the room to point out his ideas about the painting. (YESSSSS!)
4. Analyzing characterization through the lens of the D and D alignment chart
5. Playing with words
May we walk in Beauty!


“Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love’s path is communication.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions


“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.” ―Gandalf


“When I stopped trying to change you, you changed me.” ―Rachel Macy Stafford


“When will the change begin? When will it start to happen? We have waited so long and prayed so long, when will the light begin to shine in this conflicted world? Our answer is: when we each begin to see it in ourselves. When we believe and not despair, when we love and not fear, when we give and not take – then we will see the change start to happen, and happen all around us. The answer is already here, within, waiting for us to find it.” —Steven Charleston


“When Teresa of Avila was asked what she did in prayer, she replied, ‘I just allow myself to be loved.'” —Anthony de Mello


“I never lose. I either win or I learn.” —Nelson Mandela


“If you have never been called an incorrigible, defiant, impossible woman… have faith. There is yet time.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Fountain Is There

Today’s Prompt is to write an unlucky poem. I’m going to pull a phrase from the Leonard Cohen quote at the top of today’s list, and follow the ideas of Rob Brezsny in the quote at the end of the list.

Bahati Mbaya
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

All the lengths we go to
to armor ourselves against fate,
to shield our hearts from destiny:

Bad luck, we say. Just tough luck.
Dumb luck, 
we tell ourselves.
Lady Luck has not seen fit
to reward the risks we’ve taken.

I’m talking in my own ear here,
singing myself a lullaby,
crooning in Swahili:
Bahati mbaya, Mdogo.

Maybe I just can’t get there
from here. It’s not in the cards
or the gods are not smiling
upon my endeavors.

How we do make ourselves unlucky.
How we do call the losing hand.
How we do set up the game for failure.
How we do fail to take a stand.

I’m racking up my rejections,
calling in my losses,
wrangling my failures,
bearing my crosses.

Bad luck is luck all the same
and the odds are good
if we hang on to hope
that the next roll of the dice
could turn this game around.


“It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.” —Leonard Cohen
*
Denise Levertov:
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen
The fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched–but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
The fountain is there among its scalloped
grey and green stones,
it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.
*
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen
*
“Remember that day in the woods
when everything was so dark, so dreary
and you were so terrifyingly alone?

How can it be that these are the same woods
and you the same soul
and everything shines so,
and everything is filled with life?” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
*
“Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It’s as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself–indeed, you make yourself–through the riddles you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.” —Rob Brezsny


Gratitude List:
1. How everything shines so in autumn
2. Breathing
3. Stretching
4. Untangling threads
5. Listening for deeper rhythms

May we walk in Beauty!