Welcome to the Abbey’s Poetry Party #57!
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)
I have recently discovered a stash of copies of my first book on lectio divina (published by Paulist Press, written with Sister Lucy) and so I will be sending out free signed copies to the first 25 people to share their poems (will be mailed out the week of May 7th). When you submit your poem, please also email me directly with your mailing address (I’ll send confirmation I received it, but I won’t be chasing down folks for their addesses). This is my way of saying thank you for participating in the Abbey community.
This photo is of one of the doors to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I love this found mandala, because for me, I could see the clear boundary of the center where the knocker for the door was and where you request entry to the inner sanctum, and then the extension outward from there of the design which had a reaching quality to me and sense of how our service to others extends out into the world. We are called to dance on life’s edges, stretching the boundaries and horizon. I felt the beautiful tension between the center and the edges and how we are called to both – each one nourishes the other.
I invite you to ponder this image and see what it evokes in your heart. Let that be a starting point for your poem writing. Then scroll down to the comments section and share it here with our Abbey community.
54 Responses
May The many blossoms
I offer You each each day
form one great flower
which is the flower from
You to me
in my heart.
In swirls and spirals
my eyes dance,
caught up in the way
light
plays off the ridges
of your filigreed armor.
For a moment
I am so enamored with your steel beauty
I forget why I am here.
Slowly, I move my gaze
to your eyes that tell the truth-
they are no good at hiding the pain
of your loneliness.
***
How often we decorate our lives
with iron attraction
pretending our soul is at rest.
Oh, that we could shed our fancy scribbles,
our material shackles,
hiding our true selves.
That we could trust enough
to be bare and unprotected,
take an inspired breath,
and
in a moment of utter vulnerability
melt our armor with truth and authenticity.
The soft beauty of connection
reminds us we are not alone.
Silence
I love the emptiness of silence,
the room it gives to the world.
If I let go
it pulls me deep
under the sounds
on the surface of life.
Deep, deep,
where all hangs low,
I breathe ‘neath the void
of thought and act.
Silence is holy.
She seduces me,
into unknown places,
where the graces are.
At my borders where
the scent of needs
and the pull of wants live
Silence is light upon my lips,
an echo for my heart.
at the door of night, my mirrored
pond holds the setting sun like a jewel
and all the herons homeward go,
backlighted against the trees
along the shore we three stand
watching, as the thousand
things that formed this day
are folding inward slowly
Step from the edge, turn.
Wander, without effort, letting go
into the center, into the heart, into the love
of the circle, whole without holes, unending wonder
of wonder.
You only have to knock
I am here waiting
Come when you can
Stay awhile
It’s at the edges
of days, memories, time,
I find my centre.
Love the Haiku form so so succinct
Beyond Door #5
there are smiling faces and doughnuts
beyond the door
there are green bean casseroles
and spaghetti supper fundraisers with
homemade peach and pumpkin and
rhubarb pies
beyond this door
gray-haired grandmothers
sit their pew alone and sing
familiar old words under
their breath
so as not to disturb
their neighbors’
more modern hymn
a stained-glass Jesus
welcomes children to his knee—
but the only children present
beyond this door
are those bachelor tenors
in the choir
beyond this door
my mother’s own knee
becomes less certain
so she takes the new elevator
over the polished but
bruised banister
to the upper room
called Sanctuary
As “iron sharpens iron”
art is created:
Branches from the vine and
fruit from the branches.
When you finally knock,
you realize that you have not only opened The Door
But you have been a part of The Door’s design since the beginning of time.
“Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
Matthew 7:7
Curling towards the center,
my path follows the labyrinth.
When I reach the center, I find
a lion guarding the portal.
Where has my journey taken me?
I thought I’d reached the end,
only to find another beginning.