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
Silent Imagination of a Pastor
I look out over their blank faces, hollow eyes, and downcast chins.
My eyes relent in another blur of sad realization
I have seen this before
times past time abandoned souls amidst hollow walls
like whispering echo chambers, they follow me
branding again the sting and sizzle of a people who lost their way
captured by hot lettered irons, it burned its sorry imprint, and
They no longer hear.
They no longer see.
They no longer laugh.
Is it too much to ask? Faith to believe.
To hear. To see. To laugh again?
A silent death.
Stay in this place where the river ran dry?
Where no one sees their plight, or
feels their thirsty tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth
gorged by letters that have stolen their soul
like crumbling tombstones weathered in winds fight
Is love enough to live again, to sing to awaken or dance to laugh?
Listen in silence to see
rushing rapids and leaping trout.
Myth is easier to live than truth.
Imagination more potent than fate itself.
They want their myth along with their fate.
They no longer hear.
They no longer see.
They no longer laugh.
And what of me?
I’m going fly fishing among the rapids and leaping trout,
along with my imagination.
S.L.Barley
There’s a word in Hebrew for breath that creates words
invisible every other season
in winter it is revealed
you wake to snow
find the familiar forest erased
all detail gone except the contours
but step into it and see
places where deer slept
the night trails of the masked raccoon
secrets written white on white
the way silence is full of whispers
and darkness is more than absence of light
this word for breath is the same as the word for spirit
in winter’s solitude it rises over and over from your lips
like a flock of pale birds
homing pigeons
released to the translucent sky
returning to Source
unencumbered by sound
Here at Camp Vancounant
I first set a paddle in the water
To glide across through the early morning mist
The only sound
The gentle dip and swish of the paddle
And the distant sound of a loon
Rounding the bend
We scouted out an inlet
Filled with open faced Lily pads
Brilliant white against the deep inlet green water
It was long ago
Yet holds here in my memory
Like yesterday
The Presence
Within the silence of the morning mist
Alive in the gentle breath of water and wave
The endless forest of trees
Broken only by a cottage or camp
Here in the Muskokas
I found a life that lives in silence
Fragile , still, eternal
Untouched by passing time
Yet alive in the moment
I was aware for the first time
Of being wrapped in the morning mist of God
Silence a close friend of ours
Holding its breathe among the Lilies
I watch the world
waken in this place
of grand silence
and am aware
of God’s grace….
this moment
soon to change
as things do
and know
I am not alone…………….
I
In the distance the small sound of a light breeze rustles in the trees
Upon the lake, like a Montana snow across a frozen highway
The ethereal mist moves here to there, without direction or place to set
Then disappears into thin the light as the sun stretches above this hills
Not shifting the water’s cellophane-jello surface, the sound of the breeze increases
It comes at once from someplace deep, between every corner and no-where
Focusing attention to tease out the stillness, filtering the world-sounds
Goose-honk gives to far-shore campers fading to noseems winging overhead
Here just above a thistle whisp, the small stillness speaks
It calls me to sit still and rest
It calls me to come home
He is calling my name
I am a drop of water In the Ocean of Life. I am a circle whose Centre is everywhere And circumference
No where.
I emerge from Omnipresence and Into It I will merge. I am everyone and Everything and they Are me.
Let me know Eternity And I will see It in
A grain of sand.
Give me Idea and
I will inscribe it in the Silvery pages of stars. Whisper the Mysteries Of Life in my ear and I Will be silent.
I awake from my Sense bound living and realise that I Am.