Welcome to our 36th 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.
ADDED NOTE: Mister Linky is acting kind of funny and not loading properly and slowing down the loading of my blog, so for now we’re doing this the old-fashioned way and posting the poems and links in the comments section. Thanks!
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)
On Friday, June 5th, I will draw a name at random from those who participate and send the winner a signed copy of my book Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening & Awareness.
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The Poetry Party Theme: Light & Shadow
This week’s theme is in honor of my dear friend lucy with whom I co-facilitate a monthly supervision group using the expressive arts. For our session last week she invited the participants to go on a little photographic journey exploring shadow and light.
I decided to take some of the time to engage in the exercise myself. It was a brilliant day and so shadows abounded. It was fascinating to follow each invitation to the next, noticing where my attention was being drawn. I took a lot of photos of shadows of various things (and I’ll post some of those later in the week) but the image to the right remains my favorite. My own shadow image holding my camera and a beautiful tree. I continue to sit with what I notice about these two shadows in relationship to each other and the illuminated space between us. Summer shadows have a darker intensity and can reveal the shape of things.
In the brilliant light of days growing longer, what do we encounter in the shadows that may have been hidden to us before? What do you discover in the interplay between shadow and light? You can write your poem directly in response to the image, or allow it to be a jumping off point for your own musings on the theme.
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© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts
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35 Responses
Well, I too, like Anita, seemed to have missed the event altogether, but can’t resist posting late – since I have been travelling and only returned home Thursday – please allow me this indulgence…
This poem is more about finding some light in a dark time in my life – not sure if it fits into the light & shadow category exactly, but here goes….
“I Danced my Good-Bye’s”
She said to light a candle, and speak of the beauty that lies within….
But I didn’t know the words……
So I danced in the morning – woke the sun from her slumber,
And I cried with the moon shining full in my face,
Laughed with abandon when others just snickered,
Refused to be put in my place….
Tiptoed naked through backyard roses
and sang a love song to myself
Got angry at God, but still let Him love me
in spite of this loss of my health….
I waited for music to stir in my belly
So pregnant with longing and unspoken truths
Admitted my failures and blessed all my triumphs
Traced tender forgiveness through all of my grooves….
Imagined a life full of passion & wonder
Even though I believed more in pain & despair
Dared to walk barefoot into the dark desert
Sunk into silence and met myself there…..
All the while her candle was burning
The words and the melody glowing with pride
Amazed at the birthing so violent and messy
I watched life emerging – while part of me died…..
So fragrant the love my dear Goddess was giving
I drunken & dizzy returned to my home
Discovered a mother, a father, a lover
Inside my own bosom – a place all my own…..
Divorced from the need for a husband to soothe me
The ache of his leaving beginning to fade
I suckled the new woman wailing & weeping
Changed funeral proceedings into a parade….
And where was this woman so fearful & needy
Who used to regard me with desperate eyes?
She was not abandoned, her moon was still shining
In the light of her fire – I danced my good-byes….
And here I am standing with beauty so welcome
And how can I speak looking full in her face?
She smiles and then winks with mischevious compassion
“I think you’ve just spoken with the help of God’s Grace….!”
It’s one thing to be fashionably late
but to miss the event altogether is another
(except for a quick comment…)
Anyway there are a few words brewing still,
here tis…
I thought he was insane
this man in the amber dark
cajoling and flirting
encouraging us all
His hands waved
shook and flitted
fingers wagged
fist twisted
A bit of oval paper
glommed onto twirled wire
shaken, not stirred
under the lens’ eye
Amazed and bemused
and somewhat embarrassed
that by an awkward’s magician’s hands
light is carved and shaped
A chef-d’oeuvre is born
from darkness and shadow
and the most strategic of light
bits of hole-y paper in the maker’s hands
The negative of a positive
and flipped again into a negative
The blades, the filters
the dust, the obnoxious dust
Rock and roll and uninhibited curses
friendships and loves made
in that dark
That dark that was truly light
The light that shines on
in the hope that the truth
will overcome the lies
that there are absolutely no absolutes
In the name of the Lord Jesus
we love and we pray
and we remember those
in the dark
LIGHT AND SHADOW
each is known
in the presence
of the other
in the blackest
night a white flower
announces itself
at high noon
a desert tree
emerges from shadow
would we know
love without loss?
grief and anger
without hope?
Barbara Gibson
Elaine T, “we are shadow people” — I love the invitation to consider how our entire interior life and body is swathed in darkness.
Holly, thanks for sharing both Stevenson’s words and your own about the sublime stillness of shadows.
Joy, such a lovely exploration of the breadth of shadowy possibilities!
Carolyn, I love this line: “I am the texture of you” and the image of a kaleidoscope, welcome me in, indeed!
Claire, I am really moved by the closing line of your poem, let the night swallow has an integrative feeling to me which is very inviting.
Sharie, “witnessing holy essence” — beautiful you!
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