Visit the Abbey of the Arts online retreat platform to access your programs:

Writing on the Wild Edges – Poems from Participants (Michelle Winter)

This past April we led one of our Writing on the Wild Edges retreats on the beautiful island of Inismor off the coast of Galway. We will be sharing some of the writing which participants gave us permission to share here in the next few weeks. Up next is are two poems by Michelle Winter.

(If you’d like to join us, we have our dates open for 2018 – August 26-September 1)

Orienteering

Orienteering
For getting our bearings:
A compass is useful
and a map
to identify
our latitude
longitude
our altitude
and depth
A poem, or two
and, perhaps,
Courage
to help us measure
Proximity to
our Creation
Desolation
or Resurrection
to name our distance
from Grief
Joy
or Fear
And to mark our journeys from
Hidden Places
To Shared Locations
And back again.

The Journey

There is a grief in beauty
for the pilgrim soul
I grasp this liquid moment
Clutch at healing I can’t hold

There is mourning in desire
that drives the pilgrim heart
to search for home while barefoot
toes feeling for the marks

Hope and joy born of defiance
We toss our kites into the wind
They bob and soar against the currents
Tethered only by their strings

—Both poems are by Michelle Winter

You might also enjoy

Give Me a Word 2025

In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to the divine and to their own inner struggles at work within them. The desert became a place to enter into the refiner’s

Read More »

Monk in the World Guest Post: Sharon Dawn Johnson

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Sharon Dawn Johnson’s reflection Body and Beading As Sacred Texts. Reading and Listening “You need to create your own recipe.” The orthopaedic

Read More »