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Invitation to Poetry: Moments

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

  1. nice work all. movement,motion and memories. am curious,olive drab. did anyone feel a connection between the woman at the beach and the soldier on the runway?separations can bring people closer together or they cause a disconnection.as a fine woman i know said, ” i wasn’t going to love someone in the military and spend time worrying about him. then, he got deployed and i was worrying about him. so i said to myself,you love him, commit. he loved her. they got married. he got redeployed and was back in iraq. they survived that and are now starting their third year of marriage.anyway, if you have thoughts about the picture and the poem, i’d like to hear them. continue your good work. mike

  2. Wow – what a breathtaking set of poetry !!!

    Motion / Movement

    Life not lived, but merely escaped –
    Unlife: without newness or growth –
    Chemical vampire – animated, but not alive…
    Motions without movement

    Had true life ever been known?
    Sending of roots – reaching for sunlight?
    Planted in earth, yet rootless …
    Motions without movement

    Drifting, in search of joy –
    Finding no meaning in oblivion
    Repeating failed experiments
    Motions without movement

    Giving of a strained volition
    Receiving castoff fear and pain
    Broken reed in careless hands
    Motions without movement

    Motions without movement
    Without movement
    Movement

    Movement
    A vision of choice to be made
    A knowledge sans mind or experience
    A faith born of nothing within

    Movement
    A seed, long dormant, sends out roots
    A life, void of growth, begins anew
    A child is born

  3. wounded warrior
    waiting by runway
    flight to japan
    surgery then home
    no home stateside
    wounded warrior
    wondering why
    whatfor
    waiting by runway
    bleeding from his soul

  4. Bearing Witness

    A
    task so
    simple yet
    holy: three came
    slowly, silently.

    With tender, loving hands
    they spread the clothe, arranging
    the fabric as if threads were gold –
    sarcophagus transform-ed
    now sacred container –

    briefly touch-ed by
    fingers bidding
    an earthly
    farewell
    kiss.

  5. People Watching

    Do they know who they will become?
    Are they already there?

    Pink crocs and purple cast, she floats
    across the playground.
    Will she be a nurse mending others or
    the daredevil breaking bones?

    Tiny son in his own blue crocs,
    raises his voice to the sky.
    Budding opera singer? Talk show host?
    Perhaps a bellowing father.

    Newborn babes & scampering tots,
    mothers, fathers, aunties too.
    Do they know who they will become?
    Are they already there?

    The merry-go-round spins
    faster and faster.
    Which moments of the blur will
    stand in clarity?

    Bell bottom jeans, peasant top
    & flowing hair, she sits upon the campus wall.
    Could she know who she would become?
    Was she already there?

  6. A Patsy Cline Moment

    I feel like a character
    In a Patsy Cline song.
    Already broke up and cryin.
    No happy notes to hang
    My hat on, cause she took
    All them away. Never sayin
    What you meant till after
    I married the wrong women.
    All those streets of tears, salty
    And not worth a wipe.
    We could have danced to another
    Song or just let me play
    Out my own.
    But your voice said it over and over
    And no kiss can get you back.
    I fall to pieces.

  7. Marisa~Your poem made me smile…I’m mother to 4 sons and would that i could, etch their “elfin smile and dandelion clock hair into stone…” Just lovely…..

  8. Andrea, I like “Poetry Man” – especially the last two lines –

    And the feel of you covers me throughout the week
    Like honey brown molasses

    Reminds me of the deep connections we can make with others simply through good words that open the heart & soul.

  9. Geralyn….

    I keep coming back to this page and meditating on your tiny-perfect poem.

    Thank you.

  10. Come join the Poetry Party whose Theme is:
    “Moments”
    sponsored by Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts
    “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.”

    …for a little boy I cared for a few years ago…

    As You Are
    If I could have my way,
    I would cease the pendulous
    passage of time,
    to keep you
    …as you are.

    And I would etch your elfin smile
    and dandelion clock hair
    into stone,
    to keep you
    …as you are.

    But, alas,
    I have neither the power to suspend time,
    or the crafter’s gifted hand,
    to keep you
    …as you are.

    So I will stand aside and watch,
    as with the wax and wane of tides and shifting sand,
    you evolve from boy to man,
    and I will shed a selfish tear.
    I couldn’t, for just a little while, keep you
    …as you are.

    Marisa
    March 23, 2004