Welcome to the Abbey’s Poetry Party No. 60!
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! (If you repost the photo, please make sure to include the credit link below it and link back to this post inviting others to join us).
We have started a monthly theme and in September it is silence, drawn from the first principle of the Monk Manifesto: “I commit to finding moments each day for silence and solitude, to make space for another voice to be heard, and to resist a culture of noise and constant stimulation.”
Write a poem about this commitment and desire. When you quiet all the noise, both inner and outer, what is the voice you hear?
Photo Credit: “Morning Mist” by Claudia Gregoire
Let your response to these questions emerge in a poem and share below in the comments with the Abbey community.
On Sunday, September 23, 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.
September’s theme is Silence (Abbey Resources):
47 Responses
A chair
Solid rock beneath me
Water lapping the shore
like a loving dog
The shade of fragrant pines
Mist to form a cloak of solitude
A boat for change of venue,
though I doubt I’ll need it
A loon beyond the gray
telling me in tremolo
“Today, this is all you need.”
six twenty am.
barest hint of daybreak in the sky above the chimneys and the morning’s
cold with autumn early.
shapes of darkness flutter by the silhouetted treelines as bats claim the last of the
moments of the night.
the birds are singing.
standing in the dark to watch the breaking of the morning
standing in the dawn to fill your self with silence
the birds are singing loud
filling air with song of morning
filling ears with song of silence
filling soul with twilight blue of the flutter of the breaking of the silent-singing morning.
Space
Solitude drifts on currents
Of wind and water
Searching
Silence resides in stillness
Of heart and soul
Waiting
The blue vessel waits
Off shore these disquiet disorders
Once calmed and somewhat placed
A dock to step off
Into His boat of grace
Ebbing toward deeper water of love
While rest wakes
The blue vessel waits.
Sunday Service
A quiet hovers around the edges of morning,
no cicadas screaming the urge to procreate,
no human sounds emanate
from teenage radios,
the trees keep their own peace
and a gardener ventures out to work,
enveloped in the stillness
breathing only when necessary,
in silence more church-like
than church.
……beautiful phrasing and so much truth!
Dusk
On my back
on bench under tree
at dusk.
Trunks reaching up
branches overlapping
variety of leaves
slim, fat, large, small.
Varying shades of green
rustled by the breeze.
Will it bring rain?
Canopy darkens
all green dark, dull.
Breeze quickens,
time to go.
Blessed by fireflies
on the way home.
This poem is by Alden E. Sproull:
Silence
Setting with anticipation of the
coming of a new day, my mind
has distanced itself from the noise
of yesterday, with its laughter,
joking, splashing, the excite-
ment of joy pouring over all of us.
My soul longs now for the quiet,
its stillness and silence enfolds
as this new space opens to me.
As the fog lifts, light brings with it hope
no matter the issue which roused
me so early to the lake front, it seems
to have faded by the silence .
Deep sighs releasing tight energy
so healing can come. The silence has
birthed a new perspective
into the freshness of a clear new day.
—Alden E. Sproull
The mist rises as heart thoughts rising to my head.
All is peace and silence,
No traffic heard,
No planes intrude,
Just me and God.
A whippoorwill occasionally calls out,
“You are loved,
Hear and see the beauty of God.”
A faint breeze tickles me, whispering,
“God is love. You are are love.”
Peace to all who enter this sacred silence.