Monday, April 11, 2011

Monday Poetry Stretch - Peace

On my desk sits a small rock with the word PEACE engraved on it. It's been tumbled smooth and I like the feel of it in my hand. When I'm having a particularly bad day I hold it between my fingers and hope for calm and peace. It's been a stormy two weeks here, and I am desperately in need of some peace. Perhaps I can get it poetically. Won't you join me?

Leave me a note about your poem and I'll share the results later this week.

4 comments:

  1. Lessons Fathers Only Learn at Home
    By Steven Withrow


    A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
    Mark Twain

    Mommy’s off all afternoon. Saturday
    is daddy’s day. Such a noise escapes
    the hurricaned house―pent-up power
    of penned-up toddler―our neighbors
    suspect bears or bands of bandoleros
    of shuddering drizzled windows
    and putting squirrels off their ease.

    Trees blown down, block towers
    tumble to brobdingnagian boredom,
    and twenty-piece puzzles pull apart
    like planetoids around a weak sun.
    Drawing won’t do, her crayons too
    thin (too old) too fat (too new)
    for crinkled construction paper.

    I conscript sock puppets into service,
    buy ten minutes, before breaking out
    Rockin’ Baby Boombox Blaster
    for a quick karaoke-dance-party
    that fizzles after our fifth encore
    of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”
    (How I wish for Mommy’s car).

    After bribing her with ice cream
    to sip her juice cup at the table,
    I sweep up off the sticky floor
    the wreckage from the storm:
    chaos of animal cracker crumbs,
    rubble from a buttered bagel,
    an anarchy of alphabet magnets.

    I look over at my burbling girl,
    once the white and flattened face
    of the moon in a sonogram photo,
    the now-calm eye at the center
    of this maelstrom’s crushing path,
    this aftermath, and I start to laugh
    at all my wild and cataclysmic joys.

    ©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

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  2. Peace

    If I could hear it
    It would be leaves
    Thin and green and breezy

    If I could taste it
    It would be flavored
    Round and orange and warm

    If I could smell it
    It would remind
    Of fabrics, stitched with home

    If I could touch it
    It would rest small
    And smoothly in my hand

    If I could see it
    It would be wide
    And shapeless as tomorrow

    (c) 2011, Carolyn Arcabascio. All rights reserved.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The First Day

    The first day of summer,
    before Mom thinks of chores.
    My mind an empty blue pool
    I might dive into
    this afternoon when it gets hot,
    but for now I slouch
    on the back porch, snap
    the top of my grape soda,
    banish a curious bee
    and turn the page
    to read myself deep
    into somebody's summer.

    --Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Tricia ~ I'm doing deep breathing with the 4th grade poets I'm working with. Maybe this will help.

    BREATHE PEACE

    Breathe in
    Breathe out.
    Just follow
    the flow of
    breath and repeat.
    Breathe in
    Breathe out.
    Let the mind meander
    through rooms filled
    with mayhem.
    Don't start clearing
    just notice and
    keep breathing
    in and out
    until the upheaval
    in your
    head
    slips
    away.

    © Carol Weis, 2011, all rights reserved

    ReplyDelete