Welcome to the Abbey’s Poetry Party #59!
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).
As I settle into my new life here in Vienna, I am aware that August for many shops, is a time to close up and go off on vacation. Not being obsessed here with the American quest for continual productivity and availability, I have found the many signs in store windows indicating they are closed for holiday to be refreshing.
Every season has its invitation. Summer asks us to contemplate what the spaciousness of blue skies and the long opening of daylight is calling our hearts to consider? As we grow closer to autumn’s harvest, what are the fruits of summer you still want to savor? What is ripening in you? What sweetness is asking you to give your whole heart to it? Let your response to these questions emerge in a poem and share below with the Abbey community.
On Friday, August 10, I will select one name at random from the submissions and the winner receives a free copy of my upcoming book Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings — Annotated & Explained straight from SkyLight Paths when it is released later this month.
If you are looking ahead to fall for an online opportunity to listen more closely to your own threshold calling, join us for Women on the Threshold. Or if you want to nourish your inner monk and artist, consider Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist. Both experiences are 12 weeks long; both promise lots of transformative possibility . . .
49 Responses
My Summer Skin
When I go down to the sea
I slip on my summer skin
it glides through
blue-green waves
as a silken gown
caresses a lady’s
thighs
A sea weed cloak
floats behind me,
my emerald tresses
With every splash
I am showered
by diamonds,
pampered by shoes
of velvet sand
I dance
and leap into powerful aqua arms
until
panting and shivering
I race to the shore
accompanied by seagulls’
piccolo notes
crying
summer summer summer
I d
“After crawling around on my hands and knees,
all day yesterday,
scraping and then painting primer on my deck railings,
I feel double my usual age today.”
(I posted that on Facebook this morning.)
For now, I am taking it easy,
starting slowly, being kind to my old back.
I find your meditation on being a woman on the threshold,
and scroll slowly down the page,
your words nourishing me for the “golden” season ahead.
The one my husband is pining for,
the one I am feeling too weary to approach.
Then I come across the photograph.
I realize, the solid columns and arches
are only the framework for what is encircled:
Boundless blue air,
the kind you can lean into,
breathe deeply.
Unfettered, jump in.
Drink the ebullient joy.
The blueness holds out promises,
you can do anything.
Don’t let the architecture hem you in.
Spread out the arms of your mind and soar.
Now my painter friend has arrived,
and placed the extension ladder up against
the outside of my deck railing.
I can hardly move.
I take a deep breath, remembering the blue.
Just this one hurdle left to accomplish
before I can move on to my future
as an artist and writer.
Paint the trim, list the house,
stand at the threshold,
(architecture is framework),
remember the blue. Remember the blue.
Into the Abyss
My feet are firmly rooted
to the ground on which I stand
My heart soars upward
beckoned by the gaze of my
Beloved
Through the arch of time
Into the Abyss of Eternity
My soul flies free
Into the arms of my
Beloved
Seductive arch,
you always
move
the eyes of my heart
caressingly
along your edges out into the
beyond,
inviting,
a naked leap into the unknown.
at year’s birth
a word chose me –
leaping into my heart
before i could refuse it.
it laid dormant
in my winter chamber
till uncertain spring
called forth its bloom.
i did not know
i was tending to it
when the storm of tears
drenched earth’s drought.
i did not know where
my labor was leading,
or if my feeble prayer
could last the fiery sky.
yet the word, now ripened,
rests upon my newborn lips.
i stand on the threshold,
my word and His made one,
and so proclaim it:
“Yes!”
(my heart following His
into Holy mystery).
WITHOUT
without
might my words
fall
into love prayers
in the flower meadow,
clover woven round my
insect watching,
summer laughter
blowing in my hair
lovely images
beautiful, Joanna.
My feet are firmly rooted
to the ground on which I stand
My heart soars upgward
beckoned by the gaze of my
Beloved
Through the arch of time
Into the Abyss of Eternity
My soul flies free
Into the arms of my
Beloved
Enter Autumn
Days stretch.
Ease floats like clouds.
The senses burst and laugh.
Energy soars. But, all too soon, …
Change creeps.