Welcome to our 39th 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)
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Poetry Party Theme: Moments
Art and poetry are essentially about savoring a moment in time, looking and listening closely and breaking open its gifts and basking in its wonder. Last week I posted a few words and a video link about the moments that make up our lives.
I took this photo at the beach last week. I love this woman’s pensive look, I wonder what her experience is of this moment in time. Is she fully present to the beauty before her? Is she dreaming of the future? Is she contemplating the past? For this week’s Poetry Party I invite you to write a poem about a moment in time. It could be something entirely ordinary that when tended reveals something sacred.
© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts
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27 Responses
The sands at the Cape
hold our secret deep
within their dunes.
The memory
we never created…
We laughed and whispered
as we kissed
that someday
we’d make love
among the sea oats and sand.
No…ours wasn’t strong enough for this—
The ocean rolls in and slowly fades out.
Like you…
memory and soothing mantra.
I am washed clean.
I light the surface with
scattered diamonds…free.
Pain bolts across my belly like a thief
wielding a thousand knives
The amber child cradled in white
gently accepts his fate
In the end, golden yellow light
reveals that mercy has arrived
The secret promise of a homecoming.
Hi Christine, I actually used a picture of one of my nearly blank/beginning canvases to reflect on how the painting on that canvas “may” come together in different MOMENTS:)
Love the poetry that’s here already!
Moments
Flat white surface, no tooth, no direction, no aid is offered from the canvas
Can the painter master this surface, this call,
this moment
A formula, a purpose, a yearning
What will emerge, what image, what pattern will be caught
in this moment
Will it hang forever, find the trash bin or dump heap
Perhaps bask with love and honor in a home of praise and joy
A reminder of someone else’s
moment in time
magicmoment
momentous
moment
momen
mome
mom
mo
m
*
m
mom
mome
momen
moment
momentous
magicmoment
(repeat forever)
*vast emptiness, nothing special
Morning Prayer
I awake and remember
Your turn
My heart opens to you
Receiving your presence and action
In stillness.
Tears as I write
I gaze upon the great chasm
That separates us
Is there no secure path
That will allow us to meet halfway?
Must I really take
That huge leap of faith
In order to fly into your arms again?
across the coffee cups
your jawline above a white cotton shirt
evokes a love memory set in time
before the complications that
make up our entwined lives
you and me, youthful
not yet in love
a different shirt, but white
jawline slackened, but yours
love beyond what we knew
or could even imagine
AUGUST DOUBLE-TAKE
marble of a god
set on a wooden table —
my cat in my lap
~ kigen
I had a ‘moment’ less than 24 hours ago in which a poem was spontaneously born from the depth of my heart and soul. I was looking for an image, and voila synchronicity! To my delight receiving this prompt is bringing it all together.
Poetry Man
You haunt me with your raspy voice
And your words kicking up the dust around my soul
Sometimes you gift me with a smile
And other times your words sting me
And they bring tears to my eyes
If you hope to stir my soul with your words
And you want to share a piece of you with me
And you silently wish that I might see you
Hear you beyond the sound of your voice
And feel the importance of your essence shared
Then let me tell you that you do, and much more
In the brief moments in which I see your soul behind your infinite eyes
I start to shiver and my skin flushes
Heat rises and my heart is beating quickly
Mysteries are being laid before me
Unknown worlds beckon to be explored
I feel like flying and floating, tumbling in space
My thinking becomes disorganized and I lose my focus
Drunkenly I find my way home through the dark
Awakening the next morning hung over from so many words and emotions
And the feel of you covers me throughout the week
Like honey brown molasses.
Rapture
Unfurling blessings
Morning glory blossoming
Entwining my soul
Martha Louise Harkness
August 31, 2009