Poetry for Pleasure

Poetry Friday

Summer is a good time to post some favorite poems that I like for no particular reason other than they just speak to me. Maybe one of them will speak to you too.

Enjoy!

Jace

Photo by Laura Roberts on Unsplash...

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The Red Wheelbarrow


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-William Carlos Williams

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Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash...

Split Second Decision

She says, How are you?

And there is no right way

to answer this. Tell her, Fine,

and she can smile and you

 

can smile and move on

to the business at hand.

Or tell her, Oh, you know,

and shrug, and then ask

 

about her day. There are

waterfalls inside you,

steep icy roads, sirens,

tall golden grass as far

 

as the eye can see,

and for every moment

that you might mention

to her—when he did this or they

 

said that, or you knew

whatever it was that you knew—

there is all the space

between those moments,

 

that space perhaps even

more important than

anything that happened.

How you felt the world

 

dissolve before it returned.

How everything spills,

ravels, pours out. It’s truer

than anything else you know.

 

But how do you say this?

So you say, Fine. Or you don’t.

You say, well, there’s no way

to say what you will say.

 

So you open your mouth,

wondering if a black bird

or a beetle or a little lie

or your heart might fly out.

-Rosemerry Wahola Trommer

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God is Lure

God is an invitation.
A lure.
A chance to do things differently.
Always before us, 
God is possibility of collective change.
Through everyday ordinary patterns of living
disguise evil and cover over sins of power,
God makes known what is hidden,
calls us to courage, makes us capable of radical solidarity.
We are not left powerless.
Every day there are openings.
Every day a chance to choose what is right.
Every day an opportunity to re-pattern the world.

- M. Jade Kaiser for enfleshed

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Maybe [a reframe]

maybe Lost is a kind of freedom...
freedom from the should, the expectations. the plan.
maybe Lost and Grace are really sisters...
companions that journey with us
as we seek and weep and repeat.

Lost depends with merciless tenacity and holds on tight.
Grace meets us where we are and frees us.

maybe, just maybe, they are twins on a mission...
disorienting us. reorienting us.

over and over until we find what we need...
a new way. a new life. 


may your eyes and spirit remain open
to the wise and surprising sisters
Lost and Grace.

may you taste freedom in their disorientation.
may you experience rest in their reorientation.

just maybe...may it be.

-Baylee Smith in Held: blessings for the depths