Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading knowledge,
skill – more of each
than you have – inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity . . .
Excerpt from How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry, Given: Poems

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The poem stands somewhere
between your heart and mind,
Waiting to capture, to study
Nature in all its complexity,
The shock of the corpse that
Once was your mother
The sea that embraces you
The pain that drowns you
Floating on silence, words white
And black, pure and tarnished
Like Iustitia, you are moral force,
Not blind but tongueless, let the
Keyboard be your mouth, let fingers
Dance in sacred space, the words
That arise are your sword, your
mirror and your snake . . .

……….rest in this
this place, this quiet, this haven,
this heaven of cup runneth over,
nurturing your own true voice

© 2019, Jamie Dedes

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Your turn now: tell us how to be a poet.

Share your poem/s on theme in the comments section below or leave a link to it/them. All poems on theme are published on the first Tuesday following the current Wednesday Writing Prompt. (Please no oddly laid-out poems.)

 No poems submitted through email or Facebook will be published. 

IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.

PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.  

Deadline:  Monday, June 10 by 8 pm Pacific Daylight Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check ​The Time Zone Converter.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning non-judgemental place to connect.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

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A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.

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“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton