Welcome to our 40th Poetry Party!
I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your poems or other reflections. Add them in the comments section and a link to your blog (if you have one). Make sure to check the comments for new poems added and I encourage you to leave encouraging comments for each other either here or at the poet’s own blog.
Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog if you have one and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post and full credit is given – © Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts)
On Friday, November 6th, I will draw a name at random from those who participate and send the winner a copy of my zine: Sacred Poetry: An Invitation to Write.
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Poetry Party Theme: Honoring the Ancestors
This past weekend I was away leading an art and movement retreat for an amazing group of women. Together we embraced the threshold space of the Celtic feast of Samhain and the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls Days. In the Celtic tradition this time of year the veil between worlds is especially thin and we can feel the presence of the ancestors more strongly. Later the Christian church claimed this wisdom for its own liturgical rhythm and we celebrate and honor those beloved dead who have gone before us.
When you stand at the threshold space between this world and the next – who is there to greet you? Who are the ancestors – genetic, spiritual, creative – who offer you guidance and support through the challenges of life?
I invite you to write a poem in honor of one of your ancestors in particular or in celebration of the great "cloud of witnesses" and "communion of saints" who gather with us.
The photo above was taken in Ireland on my journey there in 2007.
© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts
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thanks for the prompt to get me going on this monday morning!
here's the link to mine: http://diamondsintheskywithlucy.blogspot.com/2009/11/invitation-to-poetry.html
and here's the poem…
Healing Women
Stepping over the threshold,
what story wants to be told?
Shafts of silver light illumine my world,
spreading bare the winter of my soul.
Anne, Myrtice, Daisy step into the dance
as we let go of the stone in our hearts.
Je t'aime, mes amis.
The breath of God has washed us clean &
Jubilation rings the bell
as we return Home together.
Wonderful image. I haven't used it, nor written a poem, but what you say here did make a small band of unknown ancestors force their way into what I was writing today!
I wrote this poem last year, but it so perfectly fits this theme that it inspired me to repost it on my blog with an entirely dfiferent piece of artwork and prompted me to see new symbols in the art that was created many years ago. Thanks for the inspiration and …for resurgance of memories
The sun smiles
and the moon beams
throughout infinite
journeys…
cycles of life
shining through the stars
of our bones …
revealing ancestral bridges
paved in love
that applauds us.
holy blessings.
gifts of light.
we are the substance
of our ancestors
and they…
ever after…are us.
Oh, my beloved December,
I long so to stand at your Threshold,
To hear your story of winter's colors,
To listen to the tales of your ancestors:
– of January and February
– of March, April and May
– of June, July and August
– of September and October!
Let us write their names on stones!
Let us remember them together!
Oh breath of my life, Je t'adore!
How tenderly I await your crystal embrace.
Though we have but one day to meet,
One day to make for us a home,
I am now and forever,
your Lady November!
Thank you for the precious gifts
of faith bequeathed to us.
The chalice of communion love,
and the eternal Word of grace.
The rays of sun upon a leaf
or the dew drop laden frond,
the birdsong at the birth of day
or the arrowed flights at dusk.
These precious moments fade away
with the turning of time's hand,
but love and grace reach out to us
through the gateways of the past.
Stepping across the threshold I'm greeted by a light….
A rush of family history and story floods my senses
Seeing through a thin blue veil of mist
I believe the sun is out, though not of that in August
But that of a crisp December day
Earl, Marion, Anne, Joanne, Uncle Slats, Paul
Where have they come from and why
Such a strange gathering greeting me with loving faces, outstretched arms
My heart is stopped, still, like a stone
DANG! I'm dead, I must be dead
No, yes, no – my breath has stopped but I'm not dead at all
Stop, stop with the logic – hold these moments
My own thanksgiving and love for them covers me – akin to the mist of welcome
I'm very much alive and being embraced by the family of my youth
Realizing they've never left me – their love still supporting and blessing me
Stepping across the threshold I'm greeted by a light….
CHRISTINE – Thank you for the blessings that your workshop and your leadership with BETSEY enabled me to recognize this past weekend! xoxox
A door opens.
The angle of the light invites
as the season closes.
The lintel square, secure.
No shoddy workmanship here.
What once was a wall
is now a summit
that greets a valley of green red yellow
rolling on and on toward the horizon
lifting her love to kiss the sky.
All the while I thought
I trudged my little circle on the plain.
From Jane to Gramma
On the glimmering threshold
Life unfolds in a story of longing
As the marine winds sift through memories
Unearthing long buried winter thoughts of
Playing with Gramma Snow in the
Stone scattered field by the farm
The petite chou growing and
Breathing the smell of freshly tilled soil
Filling the air with joyous chatter and
Memories of coming home to love.
The Shock of Remembrance
It was Saturday, wasn’t it
Four months from the death
Three months from the service
Looking back over journal entries
And these words, unexpected but not…
“Dad died this morning.”
So blunt, so brief, so final.
We knew it was coming
But not so soon, nor so far
So little to spark so much
Remembrance
Concern
Overwhelming
Sorrow
Wonder
Fear?
You have left
this place of tears,
where even the brightest
of moments
pale in
comparison
to eternities light…
.
We say you are gone,
but we are separated
only by a transient
threshold that
beckons us
each in turn,
to place our
foot
across
the portal,
to pass through
heavens gate
.
You are not
gone,
but rather
you have joined
heavens choir,
whose music
sooths our hearts
and enlivens our minds…
.
So sing,
sing with
exuberant joy,
and we will dance
to the memory
of you,
until
our
time
has come…
My mother stands
inside the gate of memory
beckoning me forward
into the sacred circle that she has cast.
Tall candles mark the four directions
flickering like the fireflies
we gathered on summer nights
and lined like votives
across our coffee table
while we prayed the rosary
to the radio.
Hail mother, full of grace,
I remember thee,
though your madness and your illness
kept us distant during life,
your nurturing still sustains me.
Hail daughter, reclaiming grace,
I have never forgetten thee,
even throughout the madness
I always cherished thee.
Inside the sacred circle we dance
ring around the rosary
ashes to ashes
you shall rise up
I shall rise up
All the worlds shall rise up.
I just finished writing this. I will be posting the poem to my blog on Thursday morning.
The Noise of Rejoinings
Bones crack
underground,
Undoing a life's struggles
to make connections
against a story too long ago untold.
Older brother. Father.
Mother's sisters.
Grandparents
(paternal never known,
maternal, like as not).
Infant sister. Infant brother.
Son's uncle.
Cousins' cousins.
Husband's mother.
Greek.
Irish.
English.
Other.
Roots clipped
to stubborn stumps of
first and second generations
gone missing in clouds
I search
to put to face to name.
My name.
My name is the name
of the missing, too,
a yet-link
waiting for the noise
of rejoinings:
Rejoinder to what was lost
now found.
Christine …
My mother died just this past October 12. I am not yet at a place to write poetry about her life … about her life touching mine. But these beautiful words of others … they minister hope that one day words will honor me as they gather to honor the memory of her.
Dear Christine, et al–
Thank you for the invitation, and the beautiful poems already offered up.
I wrote a poem last weekend for a prompt on One Single Impression. The prompt is 'shift in time'. Here's the poem, called: forgiveness in the thin places
Samhain
Day of the Dead
All Soul’s Day
Our prayer:
Bring us to the edge of the known
Allow us access to what we swim in
but don’t usually breathe.
These thin days shift us
like turned pages
like the enter key
like sleep.
We enter the darkness of the year
with more friends than we can shake a stick at.
Ancestors abound in our dreams
And guide our hands and hearts in so-called
waking life.
As we become the ancestors we dream of
these days bring us to awareness
healing moves backwards and forward along the time continuum:
we heal as we are healed.
These ancestors of ours need us as much as we need them.
Freedom lies here.
Waking to a shift in time can save us
years of searching and suffering
for the ties that bind.
I WISH THIS REALLY HAPPENED
She stood on the threshold of her kitchen, inviting me,
"Come and sit with me. I'll read you a story."
Her blue apron was dusty with flour, and I smelled cookies.
She wore knit slippers on her feet, just like mine.
"Grandma," I said, "what book–can I choose one?"
She smiled. "How about the Stone Soup story?
Sit down with me, wee bairn, and we'll read."
Then I felt her warm breath on my neck,
and I thought: "I've never been this happy."
In Grandma's kitchen, on her lap, listening.
Thank you, Christine, for another invitation to this very inspiring and moving party. Lots of room to dance in this space and I love the fellow dancers.
On the Dark Path
On the dark path
between this world and the next
our beloved stand
shadowy figures
holding lanterns
raised high
lanterns glowing with love-light
illuminating the deep puddles
dispelling the black mists
our beloved
no longer seen in dreams or signs
but present
as you have so longed to see them
run
run
down the narrow way
into the land of love
into the arms of the Grand Lord of Love
The Quality of Light
The quality of light in autumn
Changes everything.
Earth rotates, slipping into a universe
Alive with all who have gone before,
Present but unseen.
A native woman stands beyond my mother's grave,
Wrapped in the wind, just outside my vision.
Who was Mother to her?
Impatiently, gravel receives her body,
The falling leaves, our footfalls.
Reluctant breath,
Held and expelled, spinning into metal sky.
What of the distance between us?
A satin curtain, a mussel shell
Changing the river’s course but not its gravity.
Dissolving into the deepest crevice, darkest grief
Transforming our disappointments
Floating unconscious dreams
Blessing all that is half-done.
The woman in the wind extinguishes her smoke,
Releasing grace in tobacco-laced mystery
Illuminating ragged landscape edges.
The quality of light in autumn
Changes everything.
kigen, what a marvelous vision of including the months among those who have gone before us. And I love that you have the poetry exercise from our retreat a try with beautiful results!
Andy, thank you for this lovely offering – "the birdsong at the birth of day / or the arrowed flights at dusk" are my favorite lines, bringing those hinges of the day close.
Linda, there is a beautiful expansiveness in these words – "lifting her love to kiss the sky" makes my heart take flight.
Laura, this is a potent poem and brings those feelings of loss right to the surface, I especially love your last stanza – "So little to spark so much" indeed.
What Was Left
How dare you not tell me the truth?
How was it that I never dared to ask?
The coffin lid was closed
but it never really meant a thing.
I had already made up the answers
All of them found in the wrong places.
The fire had caught you and
Then it ate you all up
nothing left over for me.
You made your choice to go
And I decided to stay and live
these forty years without you.
I look at those pictures and think
That you were all of the things that
I was not and imagine that you were
Always loved more
and deservedly so.
It’s all so sad and ridiculous and
why should it matter anyway?
You were just a kid
And so was I.
But, how dare you not tell me the truth?
patricia, what beautiful words about complexity of relationship and the wholeness that can wash over us.
Maureen, I love your final words – "a yet-link / waiting for the noise / of rejoinings:" and the evocative images you offer here.
Laure, an abundance of blessings and prayers for comfort and grace to you.
Barbara, thanks so much for sharing these beautiful words from retreat here in this space. A joy to linger over them again, and relish your poetic heart.
Elaine, yes a wonderful group of fellow dancers indeed! And the final images of your poem made my heart expand and I could see the path before me. Thanks so much for dancing!
Geralyn, your beautiful words are quite transcendent – smoke and floating, illumination and satin curtain lift me from this moment into eternity.
Rebecca, that opening and closing question are so very powerful and a marvelous container for the journey of the poem in between.
A Permeable Threshold
Across the threshold -
beyond the divisor of here from there -
a beautiful woman has stepped.
She had been full of life,
and shared that life with many.
She had been faithful in the little things,
and many big ones also.
She had given her heart to God,
and by extension to her husband.
She had poured herself into lives
of family, friends, and even strangers.
She had a disease,
one that took her memories.
Her brain began to fail,
taking her ability to express her soul.
Her life expanded in the spiritual world,
as her mental isolation shrank her participation in the mundane.
She crossed the threshold,
and Saw for the first time.
She bursts fully-formed into a realm we can't see,
fully participating in Resurrection
Her soul cleansed,
she gives voice to words in true language.
Now free from disease,
she joins a vast choir in song.
Although I cannot see her,
her presence is felt throughout my being.
Although many others do not know her,
every person I meet is touched by her.
Across the threshold -
beyond the divisor of here from there -
Leta Darlaine has stepped.
On Your Passing
Birds sing again this morning
as they always do.
We have chosen this day to go down to the river.
Bread, fruit and a bottle of wine
packed in your beloved blue blanket.
We are full of warm smiles.
As I watch you dip a toe into the unknown waters, I gasp.
I cry out “No!”
I cannot believe the inevitable is happening.
Then I watch the foot, the ankle, the leg . . . .
till the waters finally pull you in and under
where hard as I try, I cannot find you.
I jump into the water, certain I can pull you out,
but the river dries up and I am left all alone.
I stay in that strange place for a long, long time,
until I hear your voice telling me to listen. Listen!
Without even trying, I hear.
I hear my own breath, the beating of my heart.
I feel the lightness of my own energy
and I know that I finally found you.
Grady, really lovely words, a beautiful story told here.
Karen, you also tell a vivid story, I love the way the senses are engaged here on many levels. Moving words.