Linda gave us our May challenge. After spinning the wheel of chance that paired us up with another Inkling, we sent off a poem and received a poem. Then, we were tasked to “Fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear-apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem.”
Here’s what Heidi sent me:
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight,
that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
~Mary Oliver
Golden Haystack
It’s not common, it’s not every
day
I come across words in which I
see
sparks or
hear
a sounding something
that
opens the locked box of a poem. This one more
or
less demands that I pry at buried boxes, more or less
kills
me.
This year delight will not stay with
me. I can see it, hear it, feel the gauze of delight
that
surrounds me; I try to hold it but it leaves
me
like a pin dropping, like a coin rolling, like
a
sharp momentary needle
in
my arm. I am vaccinated against joy. I search the
haystack
daily for shine, ordinary evening stealing the keys of
light.
Heidi Mordhorst 2021
Is that not the most perfect encapsulation of what The COVID Year was like? How our creativity was muffled and elusive?
I chose to respond to Heidi’s Haystack with some hay bales (a bit like last week’s pebbles), created from handfuls of straw, first from her poem, and then from the Mary Oliver quote.
Golden Hay Bales
There will always be this –
even in a year
devoid of delight,
when hope will
hide its face behind a mask, not
letting me remember to cup my hand around its flame – I can stay
as malleable as the candle with
wax dripping, flowing, creating a new me.
.
a loaded paintbrush, a sharpened pencil, a
threaded needle –
all poised in
the hand of the
maker – her thoughts a loosely massed haystack
of
hope, an undulation of light.
.
Stymied by introspective search,
brushing off the
chaff from life’s haystack
of daily
human indignities, I head for
the garden and its abundance of hopeful shine.
.
Like a crowd bearing purple-flamed torches, every
iris in the bed is poised to bloom. Any day
now I
will wake to see
the torches flaring open like firework explosions or
a hopeful chorus of purple joy I can and yet cannot hear.
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2024
.
It wasn’t until I had finished writing that I saw how light and hope are the twine that holds my bales together.
What a fun challenge! Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Heidi.
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met Linda’s challenge:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Buffy Silverman has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup. And because I had a small brain lapse when I put out the call for roundup hosts last December, leaving off June, here is the call for roundup hosts June – December 2024.
The hay bale image is from Wikimedia Commons. (Do you know how hard it is to find pictures of old-school rectangular hay bales? They’re all round now!)
* * *
Edited on Thursday evening to add…a bunch of the torches have flared open. I wish this photo had smell-o-vision!
A(nother) Year of Reading 
I feel the hope rising from your bales and from your irises! I can almost hear their lavender joy. Gorgeous, hope-filled poem, Mary Lee!
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So interesting to read Heidi’s transformation, and then your transformation of her words. “I am vaccinated against joy” feels like a stab to the heart. Thankful that we are slowly moving from those times towards “the garden and its abundance of hopeful shine.“..the chorus of purple joy.
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Wow. Your response to Heidi’s poem is…wow. These lines: “Like a crowd bearing purple-flamed torches, every
iris in the bed is poised to bloom.” These lines are spring…the hope…the life living despite all. Absolutely stunning golden shovel. Thank you for taking on this challenge. I’m having fun seeing the results and learning in the process…my favorite state of being!
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I adore “I can stay
as malleable as the candle with
wax dripping, flowing, creating a new me.” and “a hopeful chorus of purple joy I can and yet cannot hear.” 💖💖💖 Delightful post!
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These poems interact like two dancers on the dance floor, cheek to cheek, then a twirl here, a twirl there and ending with a bow. Your new pebbles honor Heidi’s original by adding a dose of your find-joy-in-the-garden spirit.
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Mary Lee, thank you for giving us hope after Heidi’s vaccination against joy stunner. Your poems are beautiful dance partners. xo
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Oh, beautifully put together, both of you. What a fun challenge to see how iron sharpens iron between two poets. We have been vaccinated against joy – that’s been a universal experience – but flowing past it, malleably making our light take on new shapes and colors taking in what sustains us from – outside this time, we carry on.
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Every “bale” here—and I’m afraid “bale” is not nearly delicate enough for the further magic you have worked here, using and reusing the line to weave something both finer and just as strong as twine. Thanks for honoring my poem this way, ML!
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I just am amazed at both of these poems. I read them both several times and each time took me deeper into meaning. Thank you!
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As I read, then re-read the poems, it feels as if Heidi, then you, Mary Lee, have shown the way it was, then transferring slowly to how it is, now, how it is moving, slowly, that melting candle wax, then the “hopeful chorus of purple joy”, finale! I remember looking out my windows a lot during that Covid year, maybe hoping I’d see the chorus, too? This is a special post, Mary Lee, thanks to Heidi and you!
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“…every/iris in the bed is poised to bloom” — The perfect description/prescription for light and hope!
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I am really enjoying reading all of the Inklings Challenge poems. Your poem filled me with hope, especially the second stanza. Wonderful!
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Light and hope do indeed tie these golden hay bales together. What a gift for Heidi. I love “haystack of hope” and I recognize this in you, the maker of stanza 2. I’m clinging to that haystack of hope today. Thank you, Mary Lee.
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Light and hope–such a powerful combination. “I can stay
as malleable as the candle with
wax dripping, flowing, creating a new me.” That line will absolutely stay with me. Actually that whole first stanza pretty much blew me away! Fantastic response to the prompt and to Heidi’s poem.
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Your light and hope ‘twine’? ‘Baled’ it! And yay for the “hopeful chorus of purple joy I can and yet cannot hear”, some of your irises ignited right on cue! 🙂
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I am in awe of how you transformed Heidi’s poem (which is absolutely how I feel this year) into a poem that looks forward. (Like many others, these lines: “I can stay/as malleable as the candle with/wax dripping, flowing, creating a new me” are lines I am taking to heart.) I spent hours in the garden yesterday and it was exactly what I needed to find an “abundance of hopeful shine.”
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Oh, wow, those poems work so well together. Love, love, love the “hopeful chorus of purple joy.” I’m waiting on ours, too, after enjoying the daffodils this year, who were just plain showing off. Maybe because they got enough rain.
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What a grand challenge Linda shared with all of you, poems begetting poems, and transforming. From Mary Oliver’s planting “ haystack of light,” to your heading into “the garden and its abundance of hopeful shine,” I appreciate the hope and all your individual tinkering’s along the way!
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”Brushing off the /chaff from life’s haystack/of daily/human indignities”
lovely description and response to Heidi’s poem.
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I love this challenge that you all did! And both of your poems are so great! Heidi’s title and “gauze of delight” are just WOW. And I love thinking about the iris “poised to bloom.”
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Mary Lee. i read your exchange with Heidi yesterday. I found both of yuor poems so interestingIt is a good diversion for me to slowly read through posts while being in isolation in the hospital.
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