Welcome to the Abbey's 54th Poetry Party (it has been long overdue)!
I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your own poem. Scroll down and add it in the comments section below. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you have one), Facebook, or Twitter, and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post)
On Sunday, January 15, I will draw a name at random from the participants and the winner will receive a free registration spot in my upcoming online art retreat for the season of Lent – Soul of a Pilgrim (February 22-April 7, 2012).
I adore winter trees. Something about their bare beauty, revealing their essence against a pale sky, makes my soul sing. They remind me that winter calls us to shed what is not necessary and turn inward, seeking the gifts of silence and stillness. A winter landscape demands that we slow down to receive its invitation. There is no rushing through this season.
I have a fascination with bones for the same reason. Something about this return to our own essence offers up a powerful invitation to me. In Paris I have gone to see the catacombs, a sacred burial site underground of the bones from millions of bodies that were deposited there. Being in their presence elicited a deep sense of awe and wonder at the lives that once animated these skeletons, the brilliant minds contained in those skulls, the passionate hearts once beating within those bodies. And knowing that one day I will also be rendered into the essence of dust and bone. It can be a painful knowing, but one that brings me to a sense of cherishing life, of savoring its beauty.
I invite you to write a poem this week about the gifts (and challenges) of winter. What does this season call forth from you? Where do you seek greater restoration and the nourishment that only darkness can bring? What are the challenges you experience as you wait for the light to return?
If you are one of my beloved southern hemisphere readers, feel free to image the far-off winter season, or share with us what you are discovering about summer's gifts this year.
*Please note: Some folks are having trouble with the comment feature – I am looking into the issue, but if you are unable to leave your poem please email it to me at Christine@AbbeyoftheArts.com and I will make sure it is included.*
You may also like:
- Rituals and Practices for Grieving
- Offerings and Delights
- Sacred Arts Ring
- Returning Home More Free
- Being an artist means. . .
The east wind blows and the cold cuts deep.
Trees barren and shaken are torn.
Life-giving water is hard and withholds its care.
In my place of fear – the winter and I are one.
Waiting for spring, I am uneasy.
With an axe in hand, I wait.
Pushed too far and I’ll use it to hack my way out!
What is it about this verse of your creation? To say it's 'lovely' doesn't seem quite right, given the axe and all…..but it contains images that are well done! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Carolyn,
I submitted my verse and then went and read the other submissions and found many of them to be 'lovely' and immediately wanted to retract mine. But it is what it is and I thank you for your affirmation. W.
I had to go seeking a more definitive word: fierce, it's fierce – as in 'keen, intense' zealous, passionate'…..I like it, alot, your offering.
this is very powerful
thankyou for sharing
Winter’s Challenge
The trees speak
of the chill,
the coldest season.
Where is the light?
When will
the seasons change?
The challenge is
to remember the light.
It never really disappears,
But it feels like
DARKNESS all around.
Sometimes,
It is not easy
to hold onto hope
of the spring.
So, I look to the trees,
as they wait
for brighter days.
Winter brings forth the dark days.
Not just physically but to the soul,
to thoughts that linger.
It is a constant push to stay on our path,
our journey interrupted,
but when we look to the trees sleeping and quiet,
we can know that they will soon bring life and joy to our world once again.
Winter
Stark the land bleak
cold
snow and rain fall today
January in Montreal
Damp the cold chills to the bone
Lonely
There is a Light
that cannot be
obscured
destroyed
overcome
Be with me
now
January in Montreal. As a Canadian, I totally get it!
Winter sun so late
rising the crows break the peace
before I break fast
…love this one.
Dark branches
reach for the sky
winter prayer.
I love Haiku in general and this one in particular. Thanks for sharing!
winter calls me
beckons with her bare branches
in a timeshifting moment
from a few months ahead
reminding me to hold on
during the heat of summer
for this too shall pass
and soon cool will prevail
and my soul will be
reinvigorated
Winter Icon
Clouds held in sky and empty branch
Framing an icon of stillness in heaven's dome
That whispers of remembrances yet unborn
In the alabaster halls of winter's womb
Unbroken snow holds both beginning and end
Where blue air dances with frosted breath
Forming words of crystal through which to speak
All these things I wish I knew.
strength in your core
open in your slumber
light persists to unfurl
shadows lace snow
strong enough to bend
fragile with waiting
branches kiss ground
patient
MIDWINTER SKIES
the world is so dark
so grey, so gloomy.
is it possible to write
of beauty, love,
magic, alchemy,
enchantment,
rich, orange,
golden, glowing,
true?
in response,
you paint me skies of midwinter:
soft peachy apricots
a palette of moonlight blues
red gold burning on the galloway skyline
pinks, purples, mauves exploding in a
fever by my door.
you scratch words with barebone branches
‘gainst the canvas of midwinter
asking softly, irresistible:
is it possible not to?
Thank you, Joanna.
A Terzanelle for Trees:
The trees that lift their branches to the sky
in January's spareness, neat and cold
call out the aching, universal cry.
The trees and I: we are all growing old.
We twist and reach for Heaven: God exposed
in January's spareness, neat and cold.
Know this: each living thing is thus composed.
We are a framework knit round sacred void.
We twist and reach for Heaven, God, exposed.
And if by grace we see our lives employed
in opening the Mystery of each day?
We are a framework knit round sacred void.
We are all vessels. Wrought of flesh, bark, clay,
for God alone we long. Lord, fill us now
in opening the Mystery of each day.
Thus seeks my soul, that bird, each person proud,
the trees that lift their branches to the sky:
for God alone we long. Lord, fill us now!
Call out the aching, universal cry.
Thank you for this. Love the form…much like a villanelle.
Home
It's 2 degrees outside
the snow is 4 feet deep
there are only 5 hours of daylight
and it is a cozy 70 degrees inside my house.
Why would i go out?
I am inexorably drawn Out
into the frozen landscape
Where the only sound I hear
is the in and out
of my own cold breath
and the occasional trill of a songbird
exuberant enough
to brave the extreme cold.
Where the trees
lift their unladen arms into
the heavy gray sky
and reach their roots down deep
to stand straight and firm
through the long dark.
Where beneath the snow
and the hardened ground
so much lies buried,
sleeping away the long winter,
the heartbeat of the earth slowed ,
the energy contained and conserved
yet intensely vital.
It is here in the season of
dark and cold
that my heart expands,
flinging its doors wide open
to invite the whole world in.
I am at Home
In Winter.
the dog and I step into the silence
of before light
he takes a deep breath -
the scent of winter visible
in his joy
the moon is a fingernail of light
the bony fingers
of the walnut tree seem
stitched into the prospect of the sky
our little corner of earth's
bounty
is
fallow. dormant. resting. bare.
there is a holiness
found in resting
and a promise of
being restored
Etchings
the reach of trees scratch and shiver
in the whimper and twist of wind
(memories of leaves softened to color and shade,
oh, yes! and a promise of return)
remind us of the justification of shadows
these bones of winter chafe
a scrambled repentance braced against gray and white
this is a prayer, a catch in the throat,
a breath through the cold
a sigh, a vapor
and a ragged
amen.
"Branch out."
"Climb to new heights."
"Don't get out on a limb."
Old voices whip
the frozen landscape of my heart
Stirring up
dry leaves of my failures to please
into their ritual dance
of try again and again try
When will my chillblained heart
receive the clean crisp cold
of freedom,
the power of sparseness,
As gift?
Midwinter God,
rake up my leaves
quiet the wind
whisper Your own breath
in my dead-winter ears
Beautiful; powerful.
Rain pelts the windows
Freezing
Covering. Coating
Ice.
Branches drape the ground
Trees fallen
Wind whips–
Whistles around the house
Icicles spear the snow banks
Lights flicker. Off. On.
Off.
Cowering in the darkness.
Shivering in the silence.
Remind me of your power
Oh the way the snow speaks
whispered breaths like
feathered spokes of a flake.
Watch it spin, its unclear path,
riding the air like a song,
ecstatic like the dervish
lost
in spirit and in splendor.
When I was young, I would dream
of riding on the snow,
of hijacking a flake for the
duration
of its short life,
of climbing in between the spokes and
nestling
in between the feathers
to hear the mystery of its essence.
What has it, if not a heartbeat?
I would start my ride
at the mother cloud, waiting for her to
birth
and catch her flake-babe
on its way into life,
contemplate
of its glory from the very first,
feel the wind propel the tines,
see what the life of a snowflake
means
beginning to end,
and lose myself in
mystery.
I never did it, of course,
not even in my night dreams,
for I
feared
the cold
and
surrender.
There's a sparseness in my soul,
I'm sure,
and could I stand the death,
maybe window-pane thrashing,
or
the loss of flakeness in the whole
of white,
or the end among the mud
after intimate witness
of its life?
I sit at the kitchen window,
face warmly tucked into my palm,
steam of coffee rising like incense,
watching dervishes spin to
the asphalt,
and I wonder.
I wonder if
risking winter
would be worth it
to hear the snow's life speak.
I woulda voted for this one, too! Exquisite.
White Light of a January Morning
Snow today and I am not eager
to drive to work down Sandy Boulevard
because cars park in the middle of the road here,
even with a mere two inches of powder,
so I delay and watch from my upstairs window
while fat flakes rain down on the bright light
of 52 year old Donna and five year old Jackson
sledding on the white sidewalk
this pallid day, another northwest winter,
sky, as always, a pewter gray, but today
children unfurl through red front doors,
full of oatmeal and enthusiasm
with more than a hint of ecstasy
stuffing their Michelin-man snowsuits
while parents gather on the corner,
a veiled vigil to snowball levity.
Nobody is going anywhere today,
except to ski in the cemetery,
wave hello to the dead,
and etch angels in grass-speckled snow.
Outside my window, between SUVs
and a few enduring maple trees,
three days past Epiphany,
tiny white Christmas lights still blink hope;
overflowing, feet-stomping, snow-shaking, door-slamming
hope; Donna shouting ‘woohoo’ with neighbor boys -
a tribe of the uncensored; hope
leaves white footprints in their abandoned wake.
[...] poem is a contribution to this month's poetry party at the Abbey of the Arts. Thank you once again Christine for your [...]