It’s so ridiculous,
comes over me suddenly
like a storm.
I want to fight with someone,
shout at them
to give him back.
Intimacy
on the order of
another husband lost.
…
Category: Poets and poetry
→
My own occasional free verse poems usually arise in response to contemplative reading. A passage by another will stir some unanswered question within.
A word or phrase comes to me. What follows writes itself, often taking unexpected turns and leading to newer, more fruitful questions. Occasionally, I share that poem’s process of discovery in a later post.
Sometimes poets and poetry resonate deeply within me, challenging me to go beyond my comfort zone. This is an experience my fellow readers and writers might relish. I republish poems if licensure allows, always with full attribution. Otherwise I share excerpts and direct my readers to the sources.
Imagine swallowing
your saliva.
Do it.
Now imagine spitting
in a cup.
Imagine swallowing
that spit.
Do it.
Imagine hugging
yourself.
Do it.
Now imagine hugging
someone
you despise.
Do it.
It’s all in your mind.
…
We never know.
That morning
I kept my hand
on our ailing cat’s belly
as he purred.
In communion with him
even while
grief tore through me.
Some say not to borrow grief
before time
but to
stay in the moment.
Yet
I’ve been trying to be immortal.
Now I can’t pee right,
and my foot is swollen.
Friends have died recently. Others are facing it first hand. My younger siblings have already experienced the death of a spouse or a stroke or life-threatening
…
It is the women
going to care for
the body
in the tomb
who find him risen.
The men
cannot believe.
There is nothing in this moment
that stays.
Nothing to guide me,
Nothing to hinder me.
Those are all thoughts and feelings
that rise and fall.
They come from nowhere
except from
previous thoughts and feelings.
Yes, there is sensation and emotion,
the brain’s tools for
sifting through
So difficult to sit doing nothing
unless enforced by the presence of others.
Alone, I want to be busy every moment.
What makes me uneasy with stillness?
Uneasiness itself?
I’m not doing anything!
You are breathing, pumping blood.
Holding down the chair.
Filling space.
Dying.
No. That word
came from elsewhere than cleverness.
That word is
closer to the bones.
I’ve not tried before to retrace in memory how my poems come into being. Yesterday a close friend’s response to “Fixed” move me to do so.
This poem came to me, as most of them do, in much the same way that spoken ministry messages come to me during Quaker waiting worship. I am inspired by something, perhaps something very minor, that crosses my awareness, and suddenly there is an image or word or phrase.
My usual morning practice
…I feel stalled
and confounded.
Snow
not yet fallen
chills me and
gets in my way.
I do not want to slow down,
let go,
wait.
Yet I must,
either restlessly
or willingly.
Nothing seems fixed.
… Are modern Friends still driven
by the nineteenth century’s social
gospel, that
worthy yet material world
oriented political drive,
standing in for waiting
worship and
seasoned
leadings?
