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Monsters Rose, a poem … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

“…the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.” The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, Wendell Berry [recommended]

Monsters rose from scenes gone by
And things once green lie down and die
While hoary sighs from glaciers stream
Mountains shiver in warming steam
Bays, gulfs and oceans wealth abort
As oil spills spew, smother and thwart
And man leaves earth in sad deface
His husbandry a vast disgrace

Note: I generally dislike rhymed poetry and don’t particularly care for this. No idea why it came out this way but it does say what I want it to say. Please always feel free to respond in your own way and style to prompts.  If you like rhyming poems, go for it.  

© 2016, poem and illustration, Jamie Dedes, All right reserved

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

I’ve had some requests for more prompts on environmental issues. So, as we dig into the new year and kick-off with the first prompt of 2019, I pulled this poem originally published 2016 (though I actually think I wrote it after the 2010 Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill) to get us going. The theme is simply “Environment.”  You may address it from whatever perspective you choose.  We’ll leave it pretty broad this week and see where Spirit moves us.

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 following Tuesday. Please do NOT email your poem to me or leave it on Facebook. If you do it’s likely I’ll miss it or not see it in time.

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, January 21st by 8 p.m. Pacific.

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.

ABOUT

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

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

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WITH TWICE-FOUND HOPE AND TENDER LOVE, a poem

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
Immaturity, George Bernard Shaw [The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays]

We four, we fumbled our pas de quatre on river rocks in
a faraway place of raging Hudson and an antique cloister.
No escape from mutilation but for books and theater,
old stories reborn, told in graceful moves and music made
for those with better breeding, more cultivated minds.

Home, our home, a place of first loves, unfounded hope
where simmering, Sidto* served soup to my sister,
a dark-olive girl-fugue in tar black and char dust.
In that place whirling with church spires and myrtle trees,
grimacing and breathless, we spun along twisted shores.
The mothers buried anger in silence, cold bile leaked. I
slipped, broke my ballerina legs in a premature grand jeté.
I failed to heal those fissured old hearts.

We were lost, our frenzied dabke* danced in crazy time,
passing green humid summers and silver crisp winters,
swinging the stone shackles of the earth-bound. Home . . .
At home, such a tangled skein of love and lies and ties where,
by the bogey breeze, tripping on river rocks, hysterical
imaginings, one stepped lively in Schadenfreude.

Solitary now

Alone above rainforest layers of a lyrical mind, I dance
triumphant, a pas marché on rain clouds, plumbed, bursting
with hard-won poems in roses, willow greens, and light.
With twice-found hope and tender love, I dance for them.

*Sidto (Arabic) – grandmother; Dabke (Arabic) – folk dance of the Levantine peoples 

© 2019 rewrite, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Illustration courtesy of Fran Hogan, Public Domain Photograph.net.

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

Facebook

Twitter

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

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

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PLEASE CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s most famous poem

Nhất Hạnh at Phu Bai International Airport on his 2007 trip to Vietnam (aged 80) Public domain photograph courtesy of Lưu Ly

 I have arrived

I am home

in the here

in the now

I am solid

I am free

in the ultimate

I dwell

Thích Nhất Hạnh , excerpt from The Long Road Turns to Joy, A Guide to Walking Meditation

Thích Nhất Hạnh is a world renown poet, peace activist and Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Monk. He is one of our heroes and this is a favorite poem. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1967, and is the author of many books , including the best-selling The Miracle of Mindfulness, An Introduction to the Practice of Mindfulness. His Amazon page is HERE.

PLEASE CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES

May all sentient beings find peace.

Link here to Plum Village International Sanga, France.

Visit Plum Village on Facebook.

Link here to Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

Facebook

Twitter

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

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

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HAPPY NEW YEAR! … “A New Year’s Plea” by Edward Guest

“Past and Present I know well; each is a friend and sometimes an enemy to me. But it is the quiet, beckoning Future, an absolute stranger, with whom I have fallen madly in love.” Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons

A NEW YEAR’S PLEA

Lord, let me stand in the thick of the fight,
Let me bear what I must without whining;
Grant me the wisdom to do what is right,
Though a thousand false beacons are shining.

Let me be true as the steel of a blade,
Make me bigger than skillful or clever;
Teach me to cling to my best, unafraid,
And harken to false gospels, never.

Let me be brave when the burden is great,
Faithful when wounded by sorrow;
Teach me, when troubled, with patience to wait
The better and brighter to-morrow.

Spare me from hatred and envy and shame,
Open my eyes to life’s beauty;
Let not the glitter of fortune or fame
Blind me to what is my duty.

Let me be true to myself to the end,
Let me stand to my task without whining;
Let me be right as a man, as a friend,

Though a thousand false beacons are shining.

– Edward Guest

Happy New Year

MAY PEACE PREVAIL

♥

REMINDERS:

  • The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt will return on January 16, 2019.
  • Sunday Announcements: Calls for Submissions, Contests, and Other Information and News will return on January 13, 2019
  • What would you find pleasant or helpful on The Poet by Day in 2019?  What have you found helpful to date? Link HERE to let me know.

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

Facebook

Twitter

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

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