Tuesday, April 19, 2022

NPM Day 19

Did you have a good day? I really didn't, but this poem, open for a while on my desktop, made me feel better.

Trust

By Thomas R. Smith

It’s like so many other things in life

to which you must say no or yes.

So you take your car to the new mechanic.

Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking

clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,

the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—

all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn’t.

Wind finally gets where it was going

through the snowy trees, and the river, even

when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life

is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.

Here's trusting tomorrow will be better. And here's the latest on the Progressive Poem.

1 Irene at Live Your Poem
2 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
3 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
4 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
5 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
6 Linda at A Word Edgewise
7 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
11 Janet Fagal at Reflections on the Teche
12 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
13 Karin Fisher-Golton at Still in Awe
14 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
15 Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in my Orchard
16 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
17 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken Town
18 Patricia at Reverie
19 Christie at Wondering and Wandering
20 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
21 Kevin at Dog Trax
22 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
23 Leigh Anne at A Day in the Life
24 Marcie Atkins
25 Marilyn Garcia
26 JoAnn Early Macken
27 Janice at Salt City Verse
28 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
29 Karen Eastlund at Karen’s Got a Blog
30 Michelle Kogan Painting, Illustration, & Writing

Saturday, April 16, 2022

NPM Day 17: The Progressive Poem Lands Here!

I look forward to the Progressive Poem every year, and I've participated in it since the beginning. It always feels like a huge responsibility to add a line. I appreciated Heidi's deft summary/interpretation of what's happened so far, and I love her choice of source material, too. I had thought about something Narnian, as the second line reminded me of Puddleglum, but after reading and being inspired by Heidi's words ("with poetry to gird us"), I decided instead to go with a book I read far more recently, this year's Newbery-winning novel The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera. My line is adapted from some words in the 29th chapter.

And now I pass the poem on to Patricia!

2022 Progressive Poem

Where they were going, there were no maps.

Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today.

Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!

We have to go back. I forgot something.

But it’s spring, and the world is puddle-wonderful,

so we’ll whistle and dance and set off on our way.

Come with me, and you’ll be in a land of pure imagination.

Wherever you go, take your hopes, pack your dreams, and never forget –

it is on our journeys that discoveries are made.

And then it was time for singing.

Can you sing with all the voices of the mountain, paint with all

the colors of the wind, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky?

Suddenly, they stopped and realized they weren’t the only ones singing.

Listen, a chattering of monkeys! Let’s smell the dawn

and taste the moonlight, we’ll watch it all spread out before us.

The moon is slicing through the sky. We whisper to the tree,

tap on the trunk, imagine it feeling our sound.

Clouds of blue-winged swallows, rain from up the mountains,

Green growing all around, and the cool splash of the fountain.

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden,

a bright, secret, quiet place, and rather sad;

and they stepped out into the middle of it.

Their minds' libraries and lightning bugs led them on.

Our lines came from the following sources:

The Imaginaries: Little Scraps of Larger Stories, by Emily Winfield Martin
The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
inspired by “[in Just-]” by E. E. Cummings
“Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Maybe by Kobi Yamada
Sarah, Plain, and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
inspired by Disney songs “A Whole New World” from Aladdin and “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas
The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor
adapted from Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman
adapted from The Magical Imperfect by Chris Baron
adapted from On the Same Day in March by Marilyn Singer
adapted from a line in Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Prince Caspian by CS Lewis
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

The schedule of 2022 Progressive Poem participants is:

NPM Day 16

I have to add my line to the Progressive Poem tomorrow! I've been thinking about it and working on it, reading and rereading the lines so far on Heidi's post, where she's added today's line.

And meanwhile, here's a poem that has been open on my desktop for a while, Li-Young Lee's "Big Clock." My favorite lines are these:

Crossing between gain and loss:
learning new words for the world and the things in it.
Forgetting old words for the heart and the things in it.
And collecting words in a different language
for those three primary colors:
staying, leaving, and returning.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

April 1 Irene at Live Your Poem
2 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
3 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
4 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
5 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
6 Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
7 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
11 Janet Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
12 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
13 Karin Fisher-Golton at Still in Awe
14 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
15 Carol Labuzzetta @ The Apples in my Orchard
16 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
17 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken Town
18 Patricia at Reverie
19 Christie at Wondering and Wandering
20 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
21 Kevin at Dog Trax
22 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
23 Leigh Anne at A Day in the Life
24 Marcie Atkins
25 Marilyn Garcia
26 JoAnn Early Macken
27 Janice at Salt City Verse
28 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
29 Karen Eastlund at Karen’s Got a Blog
30 Michelle Kogan Painting, Illustration, & Writing

Friday, April 15, 2022

Poetry Friday: NPM Day 15

I don't have anything open on my desktop that's appropriate for Good Friday, so I'm going to take a break from my NPM project, involving posting broken shards in hopes that they will turn into something entirely new, and instead reprise the poem I shared in my Good Friday post in 2014.

The silence of God

It’s enough to drive a man crazy; it’ll break a man’s faith
It’s enough to make him wonder if he’s ever been sane
When he’s bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven’s only answer is the silence of God

It’ll shake a man’s timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they’ve got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
’Cause we all get lost sometimes…

There’s a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He’s kneeling in the garden, as silent as a stone
All His friends are sleeping and He’s weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

— Andrew Peterson
"The Silence of God" in Love & Thunder

Here's a photo of the statue of Jesus mentioned in the fourth stanza. The monastery knoll is at Gethsemani Monastery in Bardstown, Kentucky. I went there for a Good Friday service once when I was in college.

(Photo source, plus more information on Gethsemani and the statues there.)

I've been thoroughly enjoying the Progressive Poem so far, and my turn to add a line is coming up on Sunday!

Today's roundup is hosted by the prolific and creative Matt, here.

Thursday, April 14, 2022

NPM Day 14

This has been open on my desktop a long time; in fact, I've shared it here before.

The Traveling Onion
by Naomi Shihab Nye

"It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship - why I haven't been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe." - Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles.
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.

Here's the rest of the poem, including my favorite line, "It is right that tears fall/for something small and forgotten."

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

NPM Day 13

For National Poetry Month, I'm posting about poetic tabs open on my desktop, or about other shards I've collected recently. This poem has been hanging around for a while.

Compassion

by Miller Williams

Have compassion for everyone you meet,

even if they don't want it. Here's the rest.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

NPM Day 12

Here's another poem I've had open on my desktop for a while. Tania Runyan refers to the Apostle Paul's comment that everything he values about his past, his upbringing, his background, he counts all of it as loss in comparison with knowing Christ.

Count it all as loss

by Tania Runyan

All of it: children whistling ryegrass,
my husband rubbing my back

in his sleep. Consider rubbish the sun
climbing the eye of Delicate Arch,

the scent of popped-open coffee.
Leave it behind, pleads the scourge-

scarred Paul. Lay it down and rise.
But even loss is hard to count as loss.

Here's the rest.

Monday, April 11, 2022

Spiritual Journey Thursday Except On Monday

I missed April's Spiritual Journey Thursday because of no internet at home, but it was such a great prompt that I just couldn't let it go by. Karen, our host, sent us this:

I bind unto myself today

the virtues of the starlit heaven

the glorious sun's life-giving ray,

the whiteness of the moon at even,

the flashing of the lightning free,

the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,

the stable earth, the deep salt sea,

around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today

the power of God to hold and lead,

His eye to watch, His might to stay,

His ear to hearken to my need,

the wisdom of my God to teach,

His hand to guide, His shield to ward;

the word of God to give me speech,

His heavenly host to be my guard.

- from the Northumbria Community

She encouraged us to write something inspired by these wonderful words. I thought of the nightmares I have been having lately, and the sleepless hours filled with worry. Here's what I wrote:

I bind unto myself this night,
the steady, slow approach of day,
the sure returning of the light,
the darkness passing on, away

I push away the nightmare’s hold
the worries, shivers of despair
the sweaty thrashing or the cold,
thoughts of the night that bite and tear

I bind unto myself this night
the knowledge that the night will pass
the knowledge of the coming light
the knowledge of the coming light

And now I'm off to Karen's blog to read what everyone else wrote this month!

NPM Day 11

I've had this poem open on my desktop for a little while, and every time I read it, I see new things in it. So much so, that it's hard to pick out a few lines.

Diving into the Wreck

by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Sunday, April 10, 2022

NPM Day 10

It's a good thing I didn't raise expectations - my own or other people's - in my post on the first day of National Poetry Month. We did indeed move, and we did indeed have to wait a while before we had internet. I had it at work, but not enough time to blog. I even missed Poetry Friday, which I try not to do. And I haven't read the Progressive Poem once yet! Next Sunday it's my day to contribute a line, so after I write this, I'm headed over there to remedy that (you can find the links to all the lines at the end of this post).

I have been reading poetry, including this book I borrowed from our school library.

I wonder how this book made its way here to Paraguay and to a shelf in our library, not a place known for its large poetry collection? I don't know, but I was glad to find it. Below is a poem from it that I particularly enjoyed, and from which the title of the book is drawn.

That last line sums up why I love getting mail: "A few weeks ago,/ someone was thinking of me." (I love getting email, too, and realizing someone was thinking of me a few minutes ago.)

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Poetry Friday: NPM Day 1

For the last three years, I've posted daily during National Poetry Month. Looking back at my first post from 2019, 2020, and 2021, I see that every year I resist promising daily posts, saying that I probably won't manage, but each of those years, I have. (Other years I have posted daily, too, even if it was just to link to the Progressive Poem line of the day.) My theme was cleaning up open poetic tabs (posting about them, so I can close them), and sure enough, I have a bunch of tabs this year as well. Once again I feel obliged to manage my own expectations: I may not get around to posting every day, what with moving into a new place this weekend, adjusting to a new job, teaching everybody in our school from Pre-K through eighth grade, learning Spanish, and other assorted whatnot. (Will I even have internet every day in my new apartment? Stay tuned!)

Last year I chose a Haitian broom as my picture to symbolize my spring-cleaning ambitions, and this year I have a photo of a box. It's a box of things that got broken during their trip here. We put the shards in the box prior to throwing them away, and I snapped a photo because it seemed like a metaphor, all those broken bits that traveled so far only to get tossed. Not pictured: the great majority of the things we brought, which did not get broken, and which continue to be beautiful and useful in their new setting. It's all fragile, though; it's all perishable. Moving to a new country reminds you of that. So if I have a theme this year, it's Shards. Little broken bits, swept up and displayed. Maybe they'll then be thrown away, and maybe they'll be turned into something new. Who knows?

So I'm starting this year with a poem I wrote and posted back in 2017. Here's the original post, where I explain how it came to be. And here's the poem:

How to Mend a Broken Vase

First, gather up the shards.
Don’t forget that the shattering sent them in all directions;
There’s one, under the fridge,
And over there is another.
You’ll probably be finding pieces for quite a while.

Once you have them all picked up,
Put them in a pile,
And stare at them.

Think about whatever possessed you
To pick up that vase full of dead flowers
With butter on your hands
And scold yourself roundly.

When you’re ready, get to work with the glue.
Make a smeary mess.
Peel glue off your fingers and try again.
Cut yourself on pieces of glass,
Drop some on the ground and step on them,
Generally fail to mend the broken vase.

Give up.

Leave the pile where it is
And get irritated with it every time you see it.

Start enjoying the way the slivers of glass
Shine and sparkle as the light hits them.
Think about what you could add
To make a mosaic.

If, by chance,
It is your heart instead of a vase that you have carelessly
Allowed to get broken,
The same procedure will work.

The incomparable Heidi is hosting today. Maybe I'll even make it to everybody's post this week, unlike most weeks lately! We'll see!