Poetry Prompt Journey: For Hoping for

Loving the full spectrum of emotions and letting them feed your poetry

Greetings Poets and Creators of All Kinds,

As we step out into the next chapter of life, whatever that might hold for you, I want to leave you with something that will hopefully sustain you, nourish you, and allow you to see how you might nourish yourself. To affirm for you how much you have within you. How resourced you truly are.

These poems are such treasures, poetry is a gift that these stellar poets give us, and gifting poetry is a gift. Support your favorite poets in the ways that you are able. Leave a good review online, check out a book from the library, purchase a poetry collection when you must buy a loved one a birthday gift. Follow a favorite poet on your favorite socials, if that’s your thing. These are just some of the ways you might make offerings of gratitude that truly support a poet. And of course, support the musicians as well! In the ways that you are able.

With such thanks to the poets who will fill our cup to overflowing:
Naomi Shihab Nye
Galway Kinnell
Mary Oliver

And to the music makers who will bring the sweetening:
Beautiful Chorus with Gentle Awakening

***

The Art of Disappearing
By Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you? 
say no.
When they invite you to the party 
remember what parties are like 
before answering.

Someone telling you in a loud voice 
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausages on a paper plate. 
Then reply.

If they say We should get together 
say Why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore. 
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project. 
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store 
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years 
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs. 
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second. 
Then decide what to do with your time.

***

Wait
By Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting. 
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness 
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

***

Love Sorrow
By Mary Oliver

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must 
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be 
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness 
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not 
altogether forget the world before the lesson. 
Have patience in abundance. And do not 
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child. 
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how 
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her; 
she begins to grow.

***

And now, with the hope we all hope for hopefully growing, allow it to blossom into your own unique expression, by coming along for the Prompt Journey via the video below…