To dreams come true!
At night we look up to the sky,
Wondering what we’ll see.
And when we see a star is falling,
We quickly make a wish.
Our mind and energy,
Our thoughts and feelings,
All conspiring to bring us joy,
Conjured up the very thing
That we have just wished for.
So in a night clear and calm,
With stars as diamond glass,
If you see a shooting star
Make a wish; know in your heart,
That what you have wished for,
Soon will come to pass!
Extraordinary ordinary people let their talent shine this morning during the Poetry in the Park class I led at the Middle Tyger Library in Lyman, SC. We spent the first hour of the class talking about poetry and the second half, writing poetry. Participants walked outside to mosey about in the wooded park on a busy, rumbling river—the library’s setting. There they observed and mused and “found” poems they came back to class and shared. They blew me away! Every one of the six participants wrote a meaningful poem very much worth sharing. I’ve invited them to submit their Poetry in the Park poems to mooingaround.com. I hope we’ll be able to share them here soon.
Check out my line poem – autobiography in just a few words. Click here i am.
Silly title of this entry aside, I want to blog today about writing when you feel blue, when you’re down. It’s “when I’m weary of considerations;” it’s when “one eye is weeping/From a twig’s having lashed across it open,” as Robert Frost so brilliantly writes in his poem, “Birches.”
Last week, I wrote that when you free your creative process you will delight in the debut of stories you’ll find hidden inside.
Your stories will delight, but they may not all be happy. At times, pain or grief will surface. When that happens, should you cast those stories out because they risk bringing somebody down with you? I think not. I can’t tell you how many times Frost’s poem has brought me comfort. Frost balances the poem with the fun and risk of swinging on birches and with his choice to live. But it’s his five lines expressing the down-and-out feelings we’ve all had that I remember the best.
Consider the tenderness in Theodore Roethke’s “Elegy for Jane,” a student of his who was killed by a fall from her horse. He speaks of her: “the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;/ and her quick look, the sidelong pickerel smile.”
Contemporary poet J. Stephen Rhodes shares inspired work in his book of poems, The Time I Didn’t Know What To Do Next. Some of his poems address his daughter’s suicide. I was honored to share a podium with him at a reading in Greenville, South Carolina. His work expressed the hard edge of grief tempered by grace.
I grappled for words when we laid to rest a grandbaby who never had a chance at life. It was a bitter winter’s day, and our hearts felt as cold as the sleet stinging the open grave. Some time later words came to me in the form of a poem I wrote, “Digging for Mercy,” published by The Petigru Review. I share the last stanza of that poem with you here:
Grace, grant us wisdom
to wrench open our hearts
lest mercy meet a closed door.
Brenda Ueland, a 20th-century writing guru, said, “Writing is not a performance but a generosity.”
I agree. When you include grief or pain in what you share with others, you may be giving expression to something that another person cannot. You may be giving voice to pain. And that can be healing.
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The wind howls in my ears
As “The Best of Times” plays in my tunes
Memories flooding with the beat
And the rhythm of the song.
Step by step by step,
The cadence of the song
Matches the beat of my run.
Images from a distant past
Replayed with every step,
A spark of joy with every verse
Of this familiar song.
“The best of Times” always bring memories
Of friends in times long gone
And friendships that remain
Preserved through time and space.
“The best of Times” brings back memories
But the best has not yet come.
Actually, my favorite poets write poems I understand. I may not catch all the nuances, but the Pulitzer has been given to understandable poets despite the misconception on the part of some folks that all poetry is difficult. Read my column “poetry we can understand” here.