RememberedThe grass is wet where Earth has pulled water from air, like rabbits from a hat. Droplets perch on the tips of blades and glisten in the morning sun— liquid lanterns. I move slowly because it's the only way I can move today. There is no virtue in my savoring steps, this is just exhaustion— airborne at first, but I have borne it ever since. The field feels too wide to cross, untraversable as the night sky, but I trace constellations in the glittering dew and train my gaze on the infinity of stars just beyond my shuffle. The sun sits at eye level. A flock of starlings swoops between us. I hear the flutter of feathers. A few steps more, and I am walking through bird breath, through air whipped by wing beat. I inhale until I am made of birds. I wonder, how many wings carry me across the shadowed and shining expanse? How many migrations re-member in the cells of this supposed self?
Oh, Chuck, this is so beautiful! I love the lightness and play of the early lines, the obvious depth of caring, the repetition of "remember," and then that heartbreaking zinger of an ending.
, it's not nearly painted as well as i had it in my head, but my old pal visiting here, greeting me with an unwelcome surprise hi, is a bottle of what was my favorite tennessee sour mash whisky. We wrestled for years before I had to kick him out. He says hi every now and then.
Still feeling the loss for you, even if it wasn't a flesh and blood pal. I haven't had a drop to drink for almost 18 years, and there was definite loss in letting go of lots of old "friends" with French and Italian names.
Churck, what a wonderful poem as story, and such a honest refleciton on the complexities of walking away from things that we both love and hate. I love that end note: "Remember, I will always miss you." What honesty and courage it takes to acknowledge that. Many blessings to you, my friend.
This poem feels so tender and the voice so beautifully childlike to me, A! I could feel myself softening more with every question. It's hard to pick favorites among such loveliness, but these questions particularly melted me - "How young is the universe?" "A parenting birthing its own tiny universes?" "Was it born of love?" "Or is its constant stretching already an unbearable ache?" "Is that why the earth is so full of hurt?" I've never thought of the universe in this beautiful, empathic, aching, anthropomorphized way . . . and now I don't think I'll ever be able (or want to) shake this gorgeous metaphor from my head.
This is 100% a result of your prompt(s). This one really struck me, and I realized immediately that I wanted to incorporate a bit of the remember idea with the interconnectedness. And your poem was such a beautiful inspiration.
I’m so glad the prompts are helpful! I feel like I’m cheating a little because mostly I just write whatever poem bubbles up for me, and then I craft a prompt based on that. But if that’s working out for others, then it’s a win all around!
This is really beautiful, A. I get this sense of undulating between self and universe as you pose questions, see connections and draw conclusions. It feels tremendously comforting to be reminded of the fact that the universe and we are made of the same atoms and are nothing and everything all at once, perhaps feeling the same existential angst. So creative (you and the universe!).
What a truly beautiful way to envision, the universe as love, a movement across a life. I love how your poem unfolds, starting so beautiful and getting even more so as each line and stanza unfolded. I felt hopeful and sad, smiling and tearful reading through this lovely poem several times. I am so grateful that our universe includes you.
I think all of my poems will be at least somewhat bird-related for the next couple months. It is a gloriously birdy time of year, and this bird nerd is in her element.
Yay, more birds! Please never stop with the birds. I love the notion of the avian middle schooler with his earnest cover, and the idea that we are all in some sense down in the basement, banging away on drums, trying to feel the rhythm of our own cells.
This is wonderful, Rebekah. I love your bird poems. The comparison to a middle schooler learning drums is so perfect, especially with the ending - "But the rhythm is just below the surface, etched into our cells. It is waiting to be found."
Bird nerd or bird bard, keep these gems coming! I love this one. I love the metaphor, the double meaning (or at least what I took as such) of being collectively in the basement, the imagery of the nest. I also love this very birdy time of year. I took a walk in a very birdy park today and sat in a spot where a tufted titmouse and friends were having a jam session that kept me still for quite a while.
Rebekah, you are a rare bird, and a beautiful conenction to earth and the being "who theron dwell (Gary Snyder). You seem to become a bird, as you describe their beauty and wonder. I love rthe reference to drums, and the reference to parents wondering why they ever thought buying drums, guitars, bells, whisteles, keyboards, saxes and other noisy things was a good idea!
It's a tribute to your poet's heart that during a walk tinged with exhaustion, you caught the wonder and inspiration of the exquisite among the mundane. I love that you traced constellations in the glittering dew and trained your gaze on the infinity of stars just beyond. I think what I love most is that you inhaled air whipped by wing beat until you were made of birds. So good.
Thank you, Keith - for your kind words and for your poem! I love the rhythm, the rhyming, the ache of the ending, and the way you left me with questions . . . I imagine you are left with questions, too.
This poem feels like a study of zoom levels -- first, we are immersed in that early walk-turned-date, and we feel all the enchantment and potential of that moment... and then you zoom way out and we see the first date in the rearview mirror, and realize it's not still filling up your present. There is obviously so much more to this story and all kinds of intermediate zoom levels that could have been applied, but I really appreciate the simplicity and space you've left here.
Thanks, Rebekah. Your comment is leading me to reflect on how that's one of the million+ wonderful things about poetry...that it is so full of choice about how and when we revisit painful things. We have the ability to zoom in or out as our heart leads us.
You really have a gift for rhythm, Keith. "Under starlight filtered/ through starry eyes,/ both of us mesmerized" and just all of the internal rhyme is so good. It really lends itself to being spoken, and I would love to see you perform poetry one day.
It's spring break here and we are renting vacation house a few hours from home with my mom, 2 daughters and son-in-law so I was thinking of vacations past with my brother growing up.
My face reflexively softened into a smile as I read your poem, Karri! I have so many of these beautiful memories with my kids and a handful of them from my childhood, too. You took me right there!
This is evocative for so many senses. I can really feel this through your words. I grew up near a lake and the "soft lapping waves" really whooshed me back to my childhood. I love the image of being sung to sleep by cicadas and frogs, too :))
This is truly special, karri. Your poem brought me right in with you, camping, fishing, hiking, riding, reading, being together. A wonderfully evocative poem. Thank you.
When every so often those gaggle of honky Canadian geese fly so close you can hear their wings whooshing, that is a cool feeling, a cool feeling indeed.
Lisa, I am late to this cycle, but I read your poem right wehen it came, and reading it again this evening in the midst of tons of work. I agree with Keith, how remarkable it is that you find such beauty and redemptive hope even in exhaustion. You have a remarkable insight and connection to the natural world, and I think on those wonderful young people sueing their states and governments for failing to protect the earth and allowing future genertations to live, breathe and live in harmonious balance. I would love to hear some of your poems read at such proceedings, to bring spirit and heart to what can be a process full of rigid dogma and doctrine. I also imagine you are a wonderful to walk with in the wild world, a wisdom keeper guiding us through the ever chnanging land, sea and air scapes!
Thank you so much, Larry! You've brought a big smile to my face. I certainly aspire to be wonderful to walk with in the wild world. I'm a forest bathing guide and also a life coach, and I've just started playing around with a blending of the two - going with a client into nature, offering prompts to help them deeply engage with the natural world, and then weaving that together with more traditional coaching around whatever it is the client wants to find movement (or stillness!) on. It's so fun, illuminating, and humbling to step back and let the natural world be the teacher . . . it's a lot better in that role than I am!
Lisa, you are doing the beautiful work of heart and spirit, in vocation, parenting, living and creating. As the poet Joy Harjo writes, may you continue to walk in beaurty. You have been such an inspiration to and for me, and a new item on my bucket list before that last train comes is to take a forest walk with you and say "what now, Coach!":
I am sorry to have gotten waylaid in this cycle, due to work and home stresses. I missed you all and will catch up on these wonderful offerings. I had a poem moving with me through the week, but it just would not cooperate and agree to be written just yet. Alas, this one emerged in a moment of sadness and sorrow. Now off to wordle!
Larry, I've missed "seeing" you here and am sorry to hear about the uptick in stress at work and home. I wish you days of "soft quiet peace" ahead. Your poem is so beautiful. I don't think there's any use trying to erase sadness out of the fabric of the universe. The bleaching that such an act would require would ruin so much of the color we love and need and crave. Your poem captures that, I think. The beautiful electricity of love and connection - and how suddenly it can seem gone or forgotten. I think the body always remembers, though, even when our heads get muddled and forgetful.
Thank you for being such a memorably kind and generous presence here - both in your beautiful poetry and in your comments!
Thank you Lisa, for your kind, compassionate and generous note. You are one of the most insightful people and a new day influencer, humble, wise, gracious, funny, brave and brilliant!
Sadness and sorrow can be excellent midwives to beauty, Larry...to wit, this beautiful poem you've shared. So many echoes of intimacy captured, on so many levels: carnal, spiritual, psychic, emotional. It's making me wonder about all the ways in which remember...not just in the mind's eye. I will echo what A. said, I have been missing your presence here, too...and hope all is well.
You say "alas," Larry, but this poem is beautiful even as it is sorrowful. I'm sure you know there's value in this kind of work as much as any other. I've missed you and your kind and generous comments. I hope all is well.
Oh, I love this, Lisa. I love the connection with water and air, and the way you write about your long Covid, and tracing constellations in the dew, and "air whipped by wing beat" and the last stanza - just everything, really.
AMBER WAVES
Hey, friend.
Yeah, its been a while.
30 years or so, if anyone's counting.
Remember
how hard I danced with you,
and
how loud I laughed with you,
and
how great I sang with you?
Remember
how patiently I waited with you,
as you lay puking your guts out
on the cool bathroom floor,
waiting for your fog to lift,
so we could go do it all again?
Remember
riding all those amber waves?
Just you and me, pal.
(fuck them).
Remember
I will always miss you.
Oh, Chuck, this is so beautiful! I love the lightness and play of the early lines, the obvious depth of caring, the repetition of "remember," and then that heartbreaking zinger of an ending.
Zingers. 🙂
I do like zingers.
Thank you, lisa.
Something about "if anyone's counting" really got to me. Really feeling the loss of this connection for you, with you.
Thank you
, it's not nearly painted as well as i had it in my head, but my old pal visiting here, greeting me with an unwelcome surprise hi, is a bottle of what was my favorite tennessee sour mash whisky. We wrestled for years before I had to kick him out. He says hi every now and then.
Still feeling the loss for you, even if it wasn't a flesh and blood pal. I haven't had a drop to drink for almost 18 years, and there was definite loss in letting go of lots of old "friends" with French and Italian names.
Thats a huge amount of time.
well done, keith.
I do sometimes wish my friend and i could have been more cordial to each other
Thanks, Chuck. One day at a time, etc. I feel you on that wish.
Churck, what a wonderful poem as story, and such a honest refleciton on the complexities of walking away from things that we both love and hate. I love that end note: "Remember, I will always miss you." What honesty and courage it takes to acknowledge that. Many blessings to you, my friend.
Yes, we do sometimes wave hi to each other,
from a safe distance.
Ah Chuck....such a fond recollection...and a bittersweet end <3
How young is the universe?
.
Of all the universes,
(are there others?)
is it as young as I am?
Is it a newborn, a fledgling?
A parent birthing its own
tiny universes?
Or does it grow without
growing old?
.
Was it born of love?
If space is a vast and
almost-perfect vacuum
that exploded from nothing
and became everything,
is that not love?
.
When it reaches its limits,
will it, too, feel a sort of pain?
Or is its constant stretching
already an unbearable ache?
Does it reverberate throughout the cosmos?
Is that why the earth
is so full of hurt?
.
In this vast and growing universe
I am nothing and everything.
.
Sometimes life feels too big,
like I am being pulled in too many directions
and I will never be enough.
Is that how the universe feels?
I think it must be, if we are all
made of the same atoms.
.
If we remember our
connection to all things,
will it make the stretching easier?
Will it hurt less?
This poem feels so tender and the voice so beautifully childlike to me, A! I could feel myself softening more with every question. It's hard to pick favorites among such loveliness, but these questions particularly melted me - "How young is the universe?" "A parenting birthing its own tiny universes?" "Was it born of love?" "Or is its constant stretching already an unbearable ache?" "Is that why the earth is so full of hurt?" I've never thought of the universe in this beautiful, empathic, aching, anthropomorphized way . . . and now I don't think I'll ever be able (or want to) shake this gorgeous metaphor from my head.
This is 100% a result of your prompt(s). This one really struck me, and I realized immediately that I wanted to incorporate a bit of the remember idea with the interconnectedness. And your poem was such a beautiful inspiration.
I’m so glad the prompts are helpful! I feel like I’m cheating a little because mostly I just write whatever poem bubbles up for me, and then I craft a prompt based on that. But if that’s working out for others, then it’s a win all around!
I don't think that's cheating at all!
If space is a vast and
almost-perfect vacuum
that exploded from nothing
and became everything,
is that not love?
This line itself is so hauntingly beautiful...lovely words and work.
Tears and chills, A. So beautiful. It's exactly what I needed this morning.
This is really beautiful, A. I get this sense of undulating between self and universe as you pose questions, see connections and draw conclusions. It feels tremendously comforting to be reminded of the fact that the universe and we are made of the same atoms and are nothing and everything all at once, perhaps feeling the same existential angst. So creative (you and the universe!).
What a truly beautiful way to envision, the universe as love, a movement across a life. I love how your poem unfolds, starting so beautiful and getting even more so as each line and stanza unfolded. I felt hopeful and sad, smiling and tearful reading through this lovely poem several times. I am so grateful that our universe includes you.
Thank you Larry. I'm so grateful it includes you as well!
I think all of my poems will be at least somewhat bird-related for the next couple months. It is a gloriously birdy time of year, and this bird nerd is in her element.
.
Snare drums in the forest
this morning, first thing.
Somewhere upvalley,
rat-a-tat sapsucker is
going for broke. He’s a
middle schooler from
the sound of it, his notes
forced and emphatic, an
earnest cover of last year’s
percussive lullabies.
.
Do you remember
that first reveille? It came
to you through heartwood,
through eggshell and fluff,
and your blood knew it
before your ears.
.
We are collectively in the
basement, banging away
on a starter kit purchased
by now-regretful parents.
But the rhythm is just
below the surface, etched
into our cells. It is waiting
to be found.
Yay, more birds! Please never stop with the birds. I love the notion of the avian middle schooler with his earnest cover, and the idea that we are all in some sense down in the basement, banging away on drums, trying to feel the rhythm of our own cells.
This is wonderful, Rebekah. I love your bird poems. The comparison to a middle schooler learning drums is so perfect, especially with the ending - "But the rhythm is just below the surface, etched into our cells. It is waiting to be found."
Bird nerd or bird bard, keep these gems coming! I love this one. I love the metaphor, the double meaning (or at least what I took as such) of being collectively in the basement, the imagery of the nest. I also love this very birdy time of year. I took a walk in a very birdy park today and sat in a spot where a tufted titmouse and friends were having a jam session that kept me still for quite a while.
I love the bird themes! And the notion of "your blood knew it before your ears" ah that is just perfection!
Rebekah, you are a rare bird, and a beautiful conenction to earth and the being "who theron dwell (Gary Snyder). You seem to become a bird, as you describe their beauty and wonder. I love rthe reference to drums, and the reference to parents wondering why they ever thought buying drums, guitars, bells, whisteles, keyboards, saxes and other noisy things was a good idea!
It's a tribute to your poet's heart that during a walk tinged with exhaustion, you caught the wonder and inspiration of the exquisite among the mundane. I love that you traced constellations in the glittering dew and trained your gaze on the infinity of stars just beyond. I think what I love most is that you inhaled air whipped by wing beat until you were made of birds. So good.
My poem, inspired by the prompt to "remember."
Remember that day
in September when we
planned to meet for a walk then
talked five hours straight
into twilight, straight into
an actual date
under starlight filtered
through starry eyes,
both of us mesmerized,
our separate selves forgotten.
How has resurrection
of bittersweet recollection
become the best
worst case scenario
in the void of our connection?
Thank you, Keith - for your kind words and for your poem! I love the rhythm, the rhyming, the ache of the ending, and the way you left me with questions . . . I imagine you are left with questions, too.
Thanks, friend. Yes. I too have questions! Maybe answers will come along with future poems.
"resurrection of bittersweet recollection" is some kind of word magic that keeps pulling me in to reread.
I love when words arrange themselves in a way that feels magical! Thank you, Karri :))
This poem feels like a study of zoom levels -- first, we are immersed in that early walk-turned-date, and we feel all the enchantment and potential of that moment... and then you zoom way out and we see the first date in the rearview mirror, and realize it's not still filling up your present. There is obviously so much more to this story and all kinds of intermediate zoom levels that could have been applied, but I really appreciate the simplicity and space you've left here.
Thanks, Rebekah. Your comment is leading me to reflect on how that's one of the million+ wonderful things about poetry...that it is so full of choice about how and when we revisit painful things. We have the ability to zoom in or out as our heart leads us.
You really have a gift for rhythm, Keith. "Under starlight filtered/ through starry eyes,/ both of us mesmerized" and just all of the internal rhyme is so good. It really lends itself to being spoken, and I would love to see you perform poetry one day.
same A...he really should!!
Thanks, A. I really appreciate that encouragement, never say never! I will let you know if I get the guts to perform a poem one day :))
This is beautiful Keith. What a lovely terstimony to the beittersweet glow of conenction made and lost, strong and shaky. I truly love the ending: "
"How has resurrection
of bittersweet recollection
become the best
worst case scenario
in the void of our connection?"
Indeed how is it so?
Thanks, Larry...yes, made and lost, strong and shaky. The polarities are striking and can make one feel stricken.
I hear you, Keith.
It's spring break here and we are renting vacation house a few hours from home with my mom, 2 daughters and son-in-law so I was thinking of vacations past with my brother growing up.
Remember those summers
Hot humid days
The lake’s rocky shoreline
Soft lapping waves
Junior explorers
Of nature and place
Never wandering far
Campsite was home base
Down by the water with
Poles, worms and hooks
Riding bikes through the campground
Downtime reading books
Chilly damp mornings out on the boat
Nights by the campfire smelling of smoke
Cicadas and frogs sang us to sleep
And we dreamed of the next day’s adventures.
My face reflexively softened into a smile as I read your poem, Karri! I have so many of these beautiful memories with my kids and a handful of them from my childhood, too. You took me right there!
This is evocative for so many senses. I can really feel this through your words. I grew up near a lake and the "soft lapping waves" really whooshed me back to my childhood. I love the image of being sung to sleep by cicadas and frogs, too :))
This is truly special, karri. Your poem brought me right in with you, camping, fishing, hiking, riding, reading, being together. A wonderfully evocative poem. Thank you.
This is lovely, Karri. What wonderful memories.
Yeah.
When every so often those gaggle of honky Canadian geese fly so close you can hear their wings whooshing, that is a cool feeling, a cool feeling indeed.
Thanks
Love that whooshing of wings!
Lisa, I am late to this cycle, but I read your poem right wehen it came, and reading it again this evening in the midst of tons of work. I agree with Keith, how remarkable it is that you find such beauty and redemptive hope even in exhaustion. You have a remarkable insight and connection to the natural world, and I think on those wonderful young people sueing their states and governments for failing to protect the earth and allowing future genertations to live, breathe and live in harmonious balance. I would love to hear some of your poems read at such proceedings, to bring spirit and heart to what can be a process full of rigid dogma and doctrine. I also imagine you are a wonderful to walk with in the wild world, a wisdom keeper guiding us through the ever chnanging land, sea and air scapes!
Thank you so much, Larry! You've brought a big smile to my face. I certainly aspire to be wonderful to walk with in the wild world. I'm a forest bathing guide and also a life coach, and I've just started playing around with a blending of the two - going with a client into nature, offering prompts to help them deeply engage with the natural world, and then weaving that together with more traditional coaching around whatever it is the client wants to find movement (or stillness!) on. It's so fun, illuminating, and humbling to step back and let the natural world be the teacher . . . it's a lot better in that role than I am!
Lisa, you are doing the beautiful work of heart and spirit, in vocation, parenting, living and creating. As the poet Joy Harjo writes, may you continue to walk in beaurty. You have been such an inspiration to and for me, and a new item on my bucket list before that last train comes is to take a forest walk with you and say "what now, Coach!":
I am sorry to have gotten waylaid in this cycle, due to work and home stresses. I missed you all and will catch up on these wonderful offerings. I had a poem moving with me through the week, but it just would not cooperate and agree to be written just yet. Alas, this one emerged in a moment of sadness and sorrow. Now off to wordle!
Remembering
When the song is over,
curtain drawn, chairs piled up,
everyone scattered into life,
what will we remember?
Will we remember the
warmth of love stronger than death,
the joy of partners woven together,
moving in harmony like
the flow of a river,
bursting spring bloom
the cry of a loon on
secluded mountain lake.
Will we remember the raw power of touch,
electric and ecstatic,
transcendent and timeless
in the splendid joy
of two into one and back again.
A soft quiet peace,
In every precious moment.
Or will there be silence,
where once was mystical melody,
intimacy lost and forgotten
hearts gone cold
in the departure of hope.
No memory that the light ever shined,
or a song ever sung.
When the last page is turned,
the book lost on a shelf,
will you remember me?
Larry, I've missed "seeing" you here and am sorry to hear about the uptick in stress at work and home. I wish you days of "soft quiet peace" ahead. Your poem is so beautiful. I don't think there's any use trying to erase sadness out of the fabric of the universe. The bleaching that such an act would require would ruin so much of the color we love and need and crave. Your poem captures that, I think. The beautiful electricity of love and connection - and how suddenly it can seem gone or forgotten. I think the body always remembers, though, even when our heads get muddled and forgetful.
Thank you for being such a memorably kind and generous presence here - both in your beautiful poetry and in your comments!
Thank you Lisa, for your kind, compassionate and generous note. You are one of the most insightful people and a new day influencer, humble, wise, gracious, funny, brave and brilliant!
Sadness and sorrow can be excellent midwives to beauty, Larry...to wit, this beautiful poem you've shared. So many echoes of intimacy captured, on so many levels: carnal, spiritual, psychic, emotional. It's making me wonder about all the ways in which remember...not just in the mind's eye. I will echo what A. said, I have been missing your presence here, too...and hope all is well.
Thank you Keith for your insight and understanding.
You say "alas," Larry, but this poem is beautiful even as it is sorrowful. I'm sure you know there's value in this kind of work as much as any other. I've missed you and your kind and generous comments. I hope all is well.
Thank you A. I appreciate you.
I feel your exhaustion as you walk along and some bit of renewal as the birds carry you onward!
Oh, I love this, Lisa. I love the connection with water and air, and the way you write about your long Covid, and tracing constellations in the dew, and "air whipped by wing beat" and the last stanza - just everything, really.
Thank you, A! I'm having the same emotional response to your poem . . . I just love everything, really!