Welcome to Poetry Party #47!
I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your poems or other reflections. Scroll down and add your responses 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) and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post)
Today is the Feast of St. Francis, the wonderful mystic who saw the wonder of God in all of creation. He is perhaps best known for his Canticle of the Sun where Francis expresses deep kinship with nature by regarding sun and moon, the four sacred elements, and even Death as siblings. On this day, many churches offer blessings to our companion animals as a way of honoring how integral they are to our lives. At 13-years old our rescued Weimaraner, Abbess Petunia, has been showing signs of her age. However she still offers me daily wisdom in learning how to simply be present to the truth of this moment. Part of the wisdom of creatures for me is in their sheer otherness and willingness to enter our lives with such exuberance.
I invite you for our Poetry Party this week to write an Ode to Animal Wisdom or your own Canticle of Creation!
51 Responses
My Gentle Friends
When I return they always run out to see me.
When I have had a bad day
or I feel needy
or I need to be around ‘real life’
that bounces and moves
I go to visit my chickens.
Their life seems simple.
Their desires seem few.
And they always know what to do.
Their simplicity calms my desires.
Their pleasant clucks bring me peace.
These gentle friends
feed my stomach with their eggs
and my soul with their presence.
“Those ole feet smell funny”
quibs my cat, “BeBop”, whom
like his name, knows that feet are
for dancing and prancing and
showing off!
“I bet he can’t do a double
twirl jump”!!
Submitted via proxy, BeBop
Old Cat
She sleeps on the highboy
curled, by the mirror
for hours and hours
she doesn’t stir
and when she does,
she sees herself-
surprised to be
yet in body, alive-
slightly dimmed
and off to one side;
she stares at her people
adrift, moving by,
as if that other world
might lend some light
to exercise her will
to flight: an imagined
Big Leap
to the other side,
already framed
in her other eyes-
but still
a dream
away
‘surprised to by yet in body’ oh what a wonderful phrase – I have cat who I think experiences that too!! How fun!!
TANKED
By Susan J. Hetrick
She
is a blonde fish who
does not swim.
She
rocks on the bottom or
rocks on a rock and struggles
moving heavenward when
she
hungers.
Her mother of invention is
a study of fertility in black and white
producing
a million possibilities
like clockwork.
She –
the sole survivor –
is a blonde fish who
does not swim.
For effect
she
lies on her side
but does not die,
and is no longer
Silent.
wonderful.
Fast and furious he leaps
From front door
To neighbor’s towering spruce
He races
For a moment
Leaving the confined
To visit four-legged friends
Upon the stoop he waits
Knowing the love within
The food, the treats
The snuggles, the warmth
The family anxiously waiting
Full of consternation
And compassion
Max is home…
Until the next door opens
–Karla, 10/5/10
Cat Thanksgivings….
She calls me Tawny Tom
and does not chase me
away
nor do brown-earth eyes
stare balefully…
She has no tail that
bristles nor does
her back arch
at my coming or going
or staying…
Lay me down atop the doormat
it is far enough away…
I feel safe this far
and I can close my eyes
for a little at a time
I wait, you see, because
sometimes…
sometimes she feeds me
she knows I am thin
because I feel her eyes
move over me
remembering fatness
under my fur
When the Sunflower
dims in the sky
and its as purple
as spider wort
I come through flat wood
beyond
and wait…
My hunger comes often
I don’t think
I am well
my strength,
it lingers elsewhere
and I think hers does too…
She does not
shoo me away
when seen
or call me things
“others” who live
in the big blue box
do…
And they look narrowly
at me from behind
the clear hardness
on high,
they know I am
without home
I have no human
There is water and coolness
and she shares it
when she rests
on the leaf-colored shelf
her eyes close too
and we are still
Sigh…
Perhaps to close my eyes
a little more as the sky
turns to deep water
and I am sated by mercy
someday maybe I shall
be strong again…
My strength,
it lingers elsewhere…
I, too, have worried
that I’ll never have a dog…
That I’ll never know the nose nuzzle nudge
to move me just slightly off my center,
or that I’ll never feel
how the throwing of a stick
could be so generously retrieved.
I have worried when I’m out walking
I’m just wandering lost without a leash,
tied without a tether.
I have worried
that without a foot warmer or hand licker
I’m not really a complete person.
So, what’s to keep me from
cleaning out a corner in the kitchen
to make a space for some one stray to move right in?
Two paws rest, content
Remind us to restore now.
With His grace and love.
Paws at rest and peace,
In honor of St. Francis
Forgive and find love.
I am taken by the connection of’ paws at rest’ with the phrase ‘forgive and find love’. Somehow it seems integral
let me show you how to be
she says
with her big brown eyes
as she
rolls over on the mat at my feet
exhales
then snoozes in the sunlight
her paws
move softly as she breathes
then twitch
and tremble as she chases
the rabbit
that runs through her dreams
yes
live
your
dreams