A(nother) Year of Reading

Poetry Friday: Wish You Were Here

Heidi’s challenge for the Inklings this month was to “write a short postcard poem with choice details of your vacation/holiday/getaway/escape location and activities. Conclude with “Wish you were here” or some variation!”

This past week, I spent two unplanned days in NYC. The actual plan was to go to an in-person workshop at Tatter on Saturday and then come right home that evening. But mid-afternoon on Saturday, my flight was cancelled. No problem, except that the two known-to-me hotels were booked up for the night. My third choice, the Hotel Beacon, was A-Mazing, so that made up for it all and I looked forward to a fun bonus museum day on Sunday before returning home that night…which was not to be, though, because my flight was cancelled AGAIN. After a trip out to The Mayhem Known as JFK in the Midst of Numerous Flight Cancellations (see photo taken from the AirTrain), I wound up back at one of my known-to-me hotels with a flight booked for Monday afternoon. I was just about over making lemonade, but I (metaphorically) sucked it up and spent a delightful couple of semi-cool morning hours walking in Central Park before spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in airports and airplanes.

My response to Heidi’s prompt is not a short postcard poem. It long, like my trip became.

But does this look like a sky worthy of a flight cancellation? I think not. It did rain later in the night, but still…

This view from the AirTrain on Sunday afternoon is, on the other hand, the stuff of understandable flight cancellations.

Here’s what the other Inklings did with this month’s challenge:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe

Jan has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Bookseedstudio.

Poetry Friday: Wabi-Sabi

The Poetry Sisters challenge this month was Wabi-Sabi. I just re-read the prompt and realized that Wabi-Sabi was supposed to be the title of the poem. Oh, well. I’ll claim the third truth of Wabi-Sabi — nothing is perfect!

In his book Wabi-Sabi Simple, Richard Powell described wabi-sabi as a philosophy that acknowledges a lifestyle that appreciates and accepts three simple truths: “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.” I embrace this philosophy whole-heartedly in my gardening.

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Lawn
dappled
with clover.
Exuberant
mish-mash flower beds.
One raised bed all fennel —
buffet for black swallowtails.
Three kinds of milkweed for monarchs.
Landscaping by Wabi-Sabi, Inc.

Here’s how the rest of the Poetry Sisters Wabi’d their Sabi:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Sara @ Read Write Believe

and Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup @ The Miss Rumphius Effect

Next month, we’re writing haiku that give away something. Haiku that could be found on your local Buy Nothing FaceBook page, or at the curb during your community’s Free-cycle event.

Poetry Friday: Snippets

I’ve been having fun pairing my (mostly) daily Stafford Challenge cheritas with photos from the garden and/or neighborhood. You can find these poems ephemerally in my Instagram stories or archived on my Instagram profile page.

Back story for the first one — our sweet peas are learning to lean INTO the garden from the fence where they climb to avoid being pruned by the deer that come through the easement and nibble.

The second is a closeup of a mimosa tree — I found one on a recent walk that had branches low enough to let me get a picture of those gorgeous blooms.

The last are balloon flowers from a plant in my garden.

Tabatha has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Opposite of Indifference.

Poetry Friday: You

Molly gave the Inklings our June challenge — a quote from a talk by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Molly reported that essentially he said, “Write something narrative and by narrative I mean something that has story and observation to it…write about the first time you saw somebody who’s become a you to you…a you that you love to say…detail what else could be seen”… and let those other things convey what it all meant to you.

After listing all the YOUs in my life and writing about a bajillion drafts, I decided that my YOU for this poem would be the process of figuring out what to write about. My YOU is inspiration itself.

I’m scheduling this post on Tuesday because on Wednesday I leave for a week spent with family. I won’t be able to comment until it’s almost time for another Poetry Friday, but I still can’t wait to see what the other Inklings do with this challenge.

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe

Tracey has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Tangles & Tales.

Image via Unsplash.

Poetry Friday: Affirmation

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month was to write in the style of Lucille Clifton’s homage to my hips, and choose our own body parts to pay homage to.

Listen and watch as she reads her poem. That grin (almost a smirk) tricks you into thinking she’s poking fun at herself, but nothing could be further from the truth. She writes against ageism and sexism and racism. Her phrase “I like to celebrate the wonderfulness that I am” became my battle cry. I am who I am who I was who I will be, but I AM HERE! Against all odds, I have come this far, and I’m going to carry on singing at the top of my voice…well, insofar as an introvert can manage, at least.

Here’s what body parts the rest of the Poetry Sisters are celebrating:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas

Janice has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Salt City Verse.

Image via Unsplash.

Poetry Friday: Conundrum

I wasn’t going to post this poem I wrote yesterday in response to This Photo Wants to be a Poem, but Margaret posted her poem “Road Construction,” so here I am in solidarity.

I am conflicted by what it means to be human. Some days more than others, but this month is one of those days. And wouldn’t you know it, my poem of the day today from Jane Hirshfield is “Let Them Not Say,” which just serves to reinforce these feelings. I am also listening the The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green which probably fuels this conflict as well. Not probably, certainly.

We have done so much harm, and yet we do so much good.

We kill and kill and kill, and yet there are five no longer invisibly small black swallowtail caterpillars sprinkling frass on our kitchen table from atop the fennel in the drinking glass.

We break so much, and yet we can dedicate ourselves to repair, and gather around picnic tables in a community garden to form a mending circle so we can repair beloved articles of clothing and dream other forms of repair into being.

I am an animal, an omnivore, and therefore other plants and animals have died so that I can live.

I know that our oak and our neighbors’ oaks send way more acorns out into the world than could ever possibly survive (even if this were a forest and not a neighborhood). I do not mourn all the possible oak trees that were eaten by squirrels and deer or that fell on pavement and rolled away down the street. But I do mourn the ones whose brief lives I ended with my weeding fork.

What to do about this existential conundrum? I guess the only thing to do is to go on. And to do the best we can in spite of what we, as an individual and as a species, are and have been. Do the best we can do. Which Kate DiCamillo would say is to have a “capacious heart.”

Michelle has a capaciously generous Poetry Friday roundup post that is bound to fill you with way more hope and joy than mine!

(the photo is via Wikimedia)

Slice of Life: Tear Jerkers

*Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.*

I have this thing for books that make me cry. When I was in middle school, Sunday afternoons were for kicking back on my bed and rereading LITTLE BRITCHES or WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS or OLD YELLER or LOVE STORY or CHARLOTTE’S WEB and letting the tears roll down my cheeks and into my ears even though I knew what was going to happen. Maybe especially because I knew what was going to happen.

I recently listened again to Krista Tippet interview Kate DiCamillo (On Nurturing Capacious Hearts) and Kate (in a response to an essay by Matt de la Peña) gave me the words for why I love books that make me cry:

“My childhood best friend read Charlotte’s Web over and over again as a kid. She would read the last page, turn the book over, and begin again. A few years ago, I asked her why.

“‘What was it that made you read and reread that book?’” I asked her. “‘Did you think that if you read it again, things would turn out differently, better? That Charlotte wouldn’t die?’

“‘No,’” she said. “‘It wasn’t that. I kept reading it not because I wanted it to turn out differently or thought that it would turn out differently, but because I knew for a fact that it wasn’t going to turn out differently. I knew that a terrible thing was going to happen, and I also knew that it was going to be okay somehow. I thought that I couldn’t bear it, but then when I read it again, it was all so beautiful. And I found out that I could bear it. That was what the story told me. That was what I needed to hear. That I could bear it somehow.’”

Go listen to the whole interview. Both Kate and Krista are wise and funny and generous.

And if you wonder why the world needs TELEPHONE OF THE TREE, a book about a grief so palpable I dare you not to feel it and weep, it’s so that every reader has access to what Ursula Le Guin calls our Operating Instructions and what Rudine Sims Bishop called windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.

Here’s more about Ursula Le Guin’s essay “Operating Instructions” from which Kate quotes “The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.”

Here is Matt de la Peña’s essay in Time Magazine, and here is Kate DiCamillo’s response (although you can, alternatively, read it in the transcript of the interview with Krista and not be bothered by the ads).

Poetry Friday: Green

Even though I wrote about GREEN yesterday in my daily-ish Stafford poem…

…I just couldn’t stop thinking about this sudden surge of LIFE. I was inspired by Margaret to try a skinny. They are lots harder than they look!

This lush and juicy world —
green
above
below
around
green
sprouting
flowering
seeding
green
and juicy, this lush world.

Patricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Reverie.

In other news, the roundup schedule for June-December is complete!

Slice of Life: Famous

The rose-breasted grosbeaks are back.

I checked back in the current five-year diary (I’m in year two) and in the ten-year volume that came before and found that last year the rose-breasted grosbeaks appeared on May 9, and their first appearance ever was six years ago in May of 2018. (Reading back through my snippets from May of 2021, the end of my last year of teaching, was a bit of a rabbit hole…)

You’ve noticed that there are no rose-breasted grosbeaks in the photo. They seem to be more wild than our usual visitors. They came several times while I stood there waiting with my camera, but just the sight of my outline through the glass door was enough to send them winging right away.

While I stood there, I was thinking of Famous, by Naomi Shihab Nye, and what a privilege it is to be famous to these gorgeous birds for our suet feeder. And to the early hummingbirds who come to the coral bells you can see peeking in the left side of the picture. Also to the black swallowtails who know they can find fennel, the monarchs who know they can find milkweed, and the lightning bugs who can thrive in a chemical-free yard.

This is all the fame I need.

Poetry Friday: Inkling Challenge

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.

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!