This is the roomwhere I birthed my son, down on all fours in animal pain, as the sire scrolled his Reddit feed, and the midwife shook a spider from her skirt.
I love that your “centering sanctuary” includes so many clues to your life, interests, and loves! This is lovely, Larry. And oh my can I ever relate to this bit - “the books we piled floor to wall, the illusion that we would ever read them all”!
Thank you Lisa. A few years ago, I committed to cycling many of the books I have acquired over the years to our local bookstore and cafe, and though working diligently, hardly made a dent. I have always found it quite comforting, these books who occupy the space with us.
I write this in a short interlude between things this evening, for this room we called the Renaissance Room in our home, which has tended to be a bit of everything along the way. I never expected a rhyming poem to emerge, but here we go.
I really enjoyed the rhymes, Larry. And the alliteration of "crumbs from crackers and crullers." I feel like i have a strong sense of your aptly named renaissance room...I vote that you print this, frame it and hang it on the wall in this magnificent space!
I love the history you conjure for us -- looking around this special room and feeling your past selves and dreams, held by the slowly-emerging present. Beautiful use of rhyme, too: "Here we learned the mystery of the grey / that seeped into our lives, day by day." and "still they come to bring us breathless at last, / the sacred circles of the dreamers' past." Rhyme gives these lines extra power!
This is lovely, Chuck. I love the pictures you paint with words here. And the psalm 23 inference at the end. Indeed, Earth is the best canvass of all! Thank you for the glimpse from your room.
I love this ode to your orange bedroom...and this line: "his fear felt like a kind of love" Oooooph, visceral. The fact that you have such a long history with this room also fascinated me, because I've moved so many times in the past 20 years, and I don't have a strong connection with any sort of home. But, I did think of a room that has profoundly impacted me. Here it is:
This is so clever! I love the idea that zoom has been a church basement, a tai chi studio, a party venue, etc. it’s pretty wild to think about the full range of experiences that happen in that 8x12 room.
I love this, Keith! It was so fun that it was set up riddle-like; it took me an embarrassing number of lines before I got it. I misread 8"x12" as 8'x12' and thought it was your car until you talked about packing 500 people into it. ;) I love all the tender examples you gave of who and what and why join you in your room of Zoom.
Haha, the packing of 500 into my car sounds like a Guinness record-like feat (it would have to be 500 very, very small bodies). I'm so glad you liked it :)
This is brilliant Keith, and the most expansive and articulate poem to our Zoom era I have read. What a creative way to give voice to the spaces we have created with our virtual access via Zoom--Zoom Rooms are here to stay. You have an amazing and expansive vocabulary, and it is delightful to read your lyrical gems!
Thanks so much, Larry. I was feeling stumped as to what room could possibly be my muse for this prompt, then it was suddenly very clear! And yes, I sort of love-hate the zoom room at times, but mostly, as I reflected on it, I felt profoundly grateful.
Incredibly creative and such an amazing description of this technology which allows people to be together when time, distance, or global pandemic did not allow them to do so. Funny you mention the "lower extremities" - my husband has worked from home since 20 and most of their calls are voice only but he had an on camera meeting this week and had to don a collared shirt. But waist down was athletic shorts per usual!
Lisa, I swear I could feel the time you spent in that room stretching out inside your poem, every beautiful and difficult moment.
I realized while trying to write this poem that many of the significant rooms in my life have been filled with a longing to change something or skip ahead, so I feel like I need to sit with that.
Thank you, A! And wow, what an amazing observation about your relationship to the rooms in your life. Your poem captures it so powerfully, and I can definitely relate to dreaming of being somewhere else rather than just dancing right here where I am.
I often wonder when I see such signs if they are actual testaments to the lives people are living. Or mere wishful thinking (as I sit and read the "live in the moment" and "count your blessings" appliques on a wall that I can't get off or it will take off the paint!!) May you have more kitchen dancing moments!
I rarely dance in my kitchen either, though I have a concept of myself as a kitchen dancing sort of person. So interesting, after reading your poem I put on some music, and without even thinking about it, started dancing. That got the dogs playing, and soon it was beautiful chaos all over this tiny house. Thank you for that, A. And don't take down your sign. ;)
I actually don't have it up right now because we'd moved two years ago and it's been waiting until we get our new kitchen set up (moved from another room) and I've been thinking of repainting it with different colours to fit the new space. But I won't give up on the dancing!
This is so poignant in its simplicity and irony...and I can deeply relate to the impulse to bypass what I have in favor of what I think would be better....and without even realizing that I'm doing it until something pulls me back in.
I like this, A. And the notion of the sign you painted and your realization that you have not dan ed enough in your magical kitchen. Do any of us really dance enough, perhaps in our dreams. May you dance 💃🏽 with joyful abandon!
I used to not like orange - it felt harsh and abrasive - but it’s been coming to me a lot recently. In softer hues, in joyful ones too. It’s also the sacral chakra - the spot of creativity and the womb space and pleasure. Things I have a deep longing for right now. This poem is so beautiful and I love how you weave the spiders in at the end.
Thank you for sharing this, Lindsey! I’d never paused to think about the significance of the fact that the room where I have birthed (and/or conceived) a novel, many poems, and my three children is orange - the color of the sacral chakra. Thank you for helping me to notice this!
Thank you Lindsey for the note about orange bring the sacral chakra. I had never thought of orange as harsh or abrasive, but done public figures seem to bear your observation out!
Thank you for sharing such an intimate portrait of any intimate space Lisa. If I may add. this is also the room where your work and words bring people together!
This is so sweet and tender, Lisa, and funny. I love how you return to the spiders in the end, connecting to the wayward spider in your Midwife's skirt. This is very nicely done.
I love colors, and orange has been a favorite since I can remember knowing there were colors, with purple a cool second. Besides the joy it brings, soemthing about orange brings me a peace and warmth that feels transcendant. In high school, much to the disgust of my dad, my Mom gave the go-ahead to paint my bedroom orange--bright orange, at that. I was gone from home when they sold that house, and I sometimes wonder what the next owners made of and did with the orange bedroom? When I worked as a Chaplain at a University and ran a communtiy center which also had 8 rooms for students to live, we let them paint their rooms whatever color they wanted when they moved in.. Sadly, in 22 years no one picked orange, but we did paint one of the kitchens orange with yellow and blue trim.
Thank you for this wonderful prompt. I marvel at how you bring these amazing and delightful prompts to us, and now know this orange room is a part of your beautiful creative process. Thank you for a glimpse into this special space, and into you. Prayers and blessings of light and love for you and your family and all fo the rooms you bring light into.
Lisa, the thought of being a kindred spirit with you lights my heart! You have created a space for kindred spirits to gather. Referencing A.’s poem, may we all be dancing!
I love this poem so much, sis -- the lyrical cadence of it, the repetition of "this is the room," the funny-not-funny glimpse of the "sire" scrolling his Reddit feed, your deepening inhabitation of your room and your life, and the full-circle spider cameo, with great spider boundaries named and maintained at the end.
Haha, i love the notion of “spider boundaries.” Those little suckers will pull you right into their web if you let them! Thanks, sis. I’m excited to see what room sparks a poem for you!
This is one of my poems I wrote in a small room in Kosovo after being surprised by a gorgeous moon. That room holds a lot of meaning, the friends and army buddies I shared it with, the many emotions and experiences that met me in that small Sea-hut built of pine by our Navy brothers.
Billy, this is gorgeous! Thank you so much for sharing. You pulled me right into the simple beauty of that moment. I love the comparison of Susan and the moon and your perfect final line - “could catch my breath.”
Thank you for sharing, Billy -- this is beautiful. There's a real openness and sense of wonder in allowing your breath to be caught by familiar things. Your poem feels imbued with wonder.
Thank you for sharing this, Billy! I love the subtle difference in your last line between the perhaps more common "make me catch my breath" and how you instead wrote, "could catch my breath."
This is wonderful and lovely, Billy. Your poem has a lyrical beauty and flow, and evokes the beauty of the moon and the tenderness and wonder of a person and a place. Thank you for bringing light and depth to a place so many of us know only for its tragedies and hard times. Blessings to you.
"Antiqued and clear/low and luminous/she floats" - really gorgeous lines. And the line about realizing that we never really know one another struck me as poignant and true. Thanks for sharing.
The metaphor of living-room-as-compass is deliciously clever, and the landing stanza about the what-is-ness of having to turn your back on yourself and inhabit such a small slice of this glorious room is profound. I also love "an original the size of a cereal box/that cost two years' worth of Grape-Nuts" and "mountains collapsed into my phone/then blown back up and framed" (technology is incredible, truly).
What a fun and delightful poem, Rebekah. This is a vivid and artful description of a special and eclectic space. I love the ending: "But here, for hours each day, my back is to the rest of me." You nailed the landing for sure! And, one day, share some fo those originals with us--I'd love to see them!
I love that your “centering sanctuary” includes so many clues to your life, interests, and loves! This is lovely, Larry. And oh my can I ever relate to this bit - “the books we piled floor to wall, the illusion that we would ever read them all”!
Thank you Lisa. A few years ago, I committed to cycling many of the books I have acquired over the years to our local bookstore and cafe, and though working diligently, hardly made a dent. I have always found it quite comforting, these books who occupy the space with us.
I write this in a short interlude between things this evening, for this room we called the Renaissance Room in our home, which has tended to be a bit of everything along the way. I never expected a rhyming poem to emerge, but here we go.
Room of many faces,
the calmest of places
except when the wild things roam
in this space they called home.
Space of many colors,
crumbs from crackers and crullers,
library, drum studio, play room
even a spot for a long lost loom.
These walls have witnessed our dances
the sparks from our ignited romances,
the books we piled floor to wall,
the illusion that we would ever read them all.
The years have been kinder to your song,
this centering sanctuary where we always belong;
Here we learned the mystery of the grey
that seeped into our lives, day by day.
Seasons come and seasons go,
the changes we visioned have come too slow,
still they come to bring us breathless at last,
the sacred circles of the dreamers’ past.
I really enjoyed the rhymes, Larry. And the alliteration of "crumbs from crackers and crullers." I feel like i have a strong sense of your aptly named renaissance room...I vote that you print this, frame it and hang it on the wall in this magnificent space!
I agree! It definitely seems like it belongs on the wall.
Thank you Keith! What a nice idea!
I love the history you conjure for us -- looking around this special room and feeling your past selves and dreams, held by the slowly-emerging present. Beautiful use of rhyme, too: "Here we learned the mystery of the grey / that seeped into our lives, day by day." and "still they come to bring us breathless at last, / the sacred circles of the dreamers' past." Rhyme gives these lines extra power!
Thank you Rebekah! I am not much of a rhymer, but it was fun to have this seep out!
This is a lovely tribute to a lovely space....may we all have a "centering sanctuary" to retreat to!
I hope you had a great wekeknd!
....The illusion we would ever read all.....nice.
Same old dock.
Pretty beat up,
missing a few planks.
Same old East River,
it never changes,
but the tides do seem a bit higher lately.
Same old wooden bench,
a two-seater,
the seascape stickers weathered and peeling,
bought on whim long ago at a Mathews market days.
a new cushion every so oftenfor my older and more tired-er backside.
My room.
Not much to look at.
Not really much of a room at all.
But, hush, and sit with me a spell,
if you have the time to spare.
and i will share my
front row season tickets
to the most amazing,
never ending,
rainbow of a symphony
that She calls creation.
A new opus each and every visit.
My green pasture
beside still waters
where He refreshes my soul.
I love the repetition of “same old,” the description “more tired-er,” the humbleness of the scene, and then the sweet beauty of the ending!
I think some of my favorite rooms are not rooms at all, but spaces that hold me nonetheless. This poem captures the sense of that when I read it.
Wonderful...thank you so much for this view from those seats. I too love the psalm 23 reference.
Beautiful and comforting. Some Psalm 23 vibes. Nice!
This is lovely, Chuck. I love the pictures you paint with words here. And the psalm 23 inference at the end. Indeed, Earth is the best canvass of all! Thank you for the glimpse from your room.
Excellent. Thank you. Larry.
I don't get "lovely" very often.🙃
You really brought me into your outdoor room. Here's adding to your "lovely" count! :)
I definitely agree with lovely. Even with the repetition of "same old" you can tell there's something special there.
I love this ode to your orange bedroom...and this line: "his fear felt like a kind of love" Oooooph, visceral. The fact that you have such a long history with this room also fascinated me, because I've moved so many times in the past 20 years, and I don't have a strong connection with any sort of home. But, I did think of a room that has profoundly impacted me. Here it is:
Never
could I ever have imagined
a single room might afford
so many views of
so many faces in
so many locations.
Nor that this modest room
could and would span time zones,
oceans, cultures, nations.
That, notwithstanding such modest
dimensions (8”x12” on any given day),
it could stretch to become
so consistently capacious, fitting
1 or 500, all the same.
In the beginning,
this room was reserved
for mundanities, mostly work meetings.
Then it was pressed into service as
an exam room for my doctor,
an office for my therapist,
a church basement for 12-step meetings,
a classroom,
a tai chi studio,
a disco,
a party venue,
the room at my dad’s nursing home
where I said goodbye to his body.
I’ve met the most incredible friends here,
gotten to know their insides
and the fronts of their faces
yet I can’t be sure they have bodies
or lower extremities, or even
whether they really exist
outside this strange room without
walls or doors or floors,
this room called zoom.
This is so clever! I love the idea that zoom has been a church basement, a tai chi studio, a party venue, etc. it’s pretty wild to think about the full range of experiences that happen in that 8x12 room.
Thanks, friend. Yes...so many hours of life spent in that "room" over the past 4 years, with *such* an array of experiences.
I love this, Keith! It was so fun that it was set up riddle-like; it took me an embarrassing number of lines before I got it. I misread 8"x12" as 8'x12' and thought it was your car until you talked about packing 500 people into it. ;) I love all the tender examples you gave of who and what and why join you in your room of Zoom.
I did the same thing!
Haha, the packing of 500 into my car sounds like a Guinness record-like feat (it would have to be 500 very, very small bodies). I'm so glad you liked it :)
This is brilliant Keith, and the most expansive and articulate poem to our Zoom era I have read. What a creative way to give voice to the spaces we have created with our virtual access via Zoom--Zoom Rooms are here to stay. You have an amazing and expansive vocabulary, and it is delightful to read your lyrical gems!
Thanks so much, Larry. I was feeling stumped as to what room could possibly be my muse for this prompt, then it was suddenly very clear! And yes, I sort of love-hate the zoom room at times, but mostly, as I reflected on it, I felt profoundly grateful.
Incredibly creative and such an amazing description of this technology which allows people to be together when time, distance, or global pandemic did not allow them to do so. Funny you mention the "lower extremities" - my husband has worked from home since 20 and most of their calls are voice only but he had an on camera meeting this week and had to don a collared shirt. But waist down was athletic shorts per usual!
The key is to remember to have something on the bottom at all times, just in case of a video glitch!
LOL!
Lisa, I swear I could feel the time you spent in that room stretching out inside your poem, every beautiful and difficult moment.
I realized while trying to write this poem that many of the significant rooms in my life have been filled with a longing to change something or skip ahead, so I feel like I need to sit with that.
"This kitchen is for dancing,"
according to the cheerful sign
I hand painted and hung on the wall,
but in reality I sleep-walked through it
more than anything else, day-dreaming
of a life in which dancing was the default.
Thank you, A! And wow, what an amazing observation about your relationship to the rooms in your life. Your poem captures it so powerfully, and I can definitely relate to dreaming of being somewhere else rather than just dancing right here where I am.
I often wonder when I see such signs if they are actual testaments to the lives people are living. Or mere wishful thinking (as I sit and read the "live in the moment" and "count your blessings" appliques on a wall that I can't get off or it will take off the paint!!) May you have more kitchen dancing moments!
I rarely dance in my kitchen either, though I have a concept of myself as a kitchen dancing sort of person. So interesting, after reading your poem I put on some music, and without even thinking about it, started dancing. That got the dogs playing, and soon it was beautiful chaos all over this tiny house. Thank you for that, A. And don't take down your sign. ;)
I actually don't have it up right now because we'd moved two years ago and it's been waiting until we get our new kitchen set up (moved from another room) and I've been thinking of repainting it with different colours to fit the new space. But I won't give up on the dancing!
This is so poignant in its simplicity and irony...and I can deeply relate to the impulse to bypass what I have in favor of what I think would be better....and without even realizing that I'm doing it until something pulls me back in.
I like this, A. And the notion of the sign you painted and your realization that you have not dan ed enough in your magical kitchen. Do any of us really dance enough, perhaps in our dreams. May you dance 💃🏽 with joyful abandon!
I used to not like orange - it felt harsh and abrasive - but it’s been coming to me a lot recently. In softer hues, in joyful ones too. It’s also the sacral chakra - the spot of creativity and the womb space and pleasure. Things I have a deep longing for right now. This poem is so beautiful and I love how you weave the spiders in at the end.
Thank you for sharing this, Lindsey! I’d never paused to think about the significance of the fact that the room where I have birthed (and/or conceived) a novel, many poems, and my three children is orange - the color of the sacral chakra. Thank you for helping me to notice this!
🧡🧡🧡
Thank you Lindsey for the note about orange bring the sacral chakra. I had never thought of orange as harsh or abrasive, but done public figures seem to bear your observation out!
😆😆 I didn’t even think of that connection!
New to your Substack Lisa and I really loved this poem. I'm going to have to see if my poetic chops still work but I will share soon.
I really look forward to reading whatever you share! For me anyway, heart holds as much or value than chops.
Very true, it's my heart that drives the chops. Thanks, Lisa
Welcome and anytime you share, it will be a gift!
Thank you for your encouragement, Larry!
Thank you for sharing such an intimate portrait of any intimate space Lisa. If I may add. this is also the room where your work and words bring people together!
Thank you so much, Karri! That makes me smile.
Thank you for the kind comments. Lisa, you are an outstanding poet and have a wonderful community here.
This is so sweet and tender, Lisa, and funny. I love how you return to the spiders in the end, connecting to the wayward spider in your Midwife's skirt. This is very nicely done.
I love colors, and orange has been a favorite since I can remember knowing there were colors, with purple a cool second. Besides the joy it brings, soemthing about orange brings me a peace and warmth that feels transcendant. In high school, much to the disgust of my dad, my Mom gave the go-ahead to paint my bedroom orange--bright orange, at that. I was gone from home when they sold that house, and I sometimes wonder what the next owners made of and did with the orange bedroom? When I worked as a Chaplain at a University and ran a communtiy center which also had 8 rooms for students to live, we let them paint their rooms whatever color they wanted when they moved in.. Sadly, in 22 years no one picked orange, but we did paint one of the kitchens orange with yellow and blue trim.
Thank you for this wonderful prompt. I marvel at how you bring these amazing and delightful prompts to us, and now know this orange room is a part of your beautiful creative process. Thank you for a glimpse into this special space, and into you. Prayers and blessings of light and love for you and your family and all fo the rooms you bring light into.
A fellow lover of orange rooms! I’m so glad to know this about you, Larry. I knew we were kindred spirits.
Lisa, the thought of being a kindred spirit with you lights my heart! You have created a space for kindred spirits to gather. Referencing A.’s poem, may we all be dancing!
.....spiders......
Wow. Devastating in beautiful ways. 🧡Reminiscint of You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith, which I’m currently reading.
Ooooh that’s on my reading list! Let me know how you like it!
I'm almost finished with this book and I think that's such an apt comparison.
I am pretty underwhelmed by it, to be honest... The poignancy of Lisa’s poem has stayed with me. ✴️
Oh interesting! I might pick your brain about this some time.
I love this poem so much, sis -- the lyrical cadence of it, the repetition of "this is the room," the funny-not-funny glimpse of the "sire" scrolling his Reddit feed, your deepening inhabitation of your room and your life, and the full-circle spider cameo, with great spider boundaries named and maintained at the end.
Haha, i love the notion of “spider boundaries.” Those little suckers will pull you right into their web if you let them! Thanks, sis. I’m excited to see what room sparks a poem for you!
A beautiful and powerful poem Lisa.
His fear almost felt like love-
(Paraphrasing)
You really did a wonderful job of weaving time and space and emotion into this work. Beautiful
Thank you so much, Billy!
This is one of my poems I wrote in a small room in Kosovo after being surprised by a gorgeous moon. That room holds a lot of meaning, the friends and army buddies I shared it with, the many emotions and experiences that met me in that small Sea-hut built of pine by our Navy brothers.
https://open.substack.com/pub/billy2r6q7/p/24-feb-2000-half-moon-waning?r=1nyjrs&utm_medium=ios
Billy, this is gorgeous! Thank you so much for sharing. You pulled me right into the simple beauty of that moment. I love the comparison of Susan and the moon and your perfect final line - “could catch my breath.”
Thank you for sharing, Billy -- this is beautiful. There's a real openness and sense of wonder in allowing your breath to be caught by familiar things. Your poem feels imbued with wonder.
Thank you for sharing this, Billy! I love the subtle difference in your last line between the perhaps more common "make me catch my breath" and how you instead wrote, "could catch my breath."
This is wonderful and lovely, Billy. Your poem has a lyrical beauty and flow, and evokes the beauty of the moon and the tenderness and wonder of a person and a place. Thank you for bringing light and depth to a place so many of us know only for its tragedies and hard times. Blessings to you.
"Antiqued and clear/low and luminous/she floats" - really gorgeous lines. And the line about realizing that we never really know one another struck me as poignant and true. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for sharing Billy...I am transported to that small room and seeing that large moon with your writing!
I like the idea of the moon garnering our attention.
Also, Go navy.
For lack of a better title, let's call this "Boo, I Have to Work."
.
If my living room were a compass
you’d find a 40-degree sweep
of books on the southern wall,
a 30-degree span of couch (east)
that, despite being trained on a
a 10-degree patch of Netflix (west),
is more often used for phone calls,
poems, and every kind of page.
The couch is backlit with
feeder birds, and warmed
on the north by 2 degrees
of cast iron, within which pumps
the house’s 500-degree heart.
.
In all directions, art as I know it:
mountains collapsed into my
phone, then blown back up
and framed. Curios, prints, and
an original the size of a cereal box
that cost two years’ worth of
Grape-Nuts. A few of my own
originals, too, scratched
at the small table in the center
of the rose.
.
It’s a lively room, but the needle
is stubborn, pointing so often
to the northeast corner. Here is
where I sit in front of the 1-degree
money screen. I am flanked by
plants and held by a window,
for which I’m grateful. But here,
for hours each day, my back is to
the rest of me.
The metaphor of living-room-as-compass is deliciously clever, and the landing stanza about the what-is-ness of having to turn your back on yourself and inhabit such a small slice of this glorious room is profound. I also love "an original the size of a cereal box/that cost two years' worth of Grape-Nuts" and "mountains collapsed into my phone/then blown back up and framed" (technology is incredible, truly).
What a fun and delightful poem, Rebekah. This is a vivid and artful description of a special and eclectic space. I love the ending: "But here, for hours each day, my back is to the rest of me." You nailed the landing for sure! And, one day, share some fo those originals with us--I'd love to see them!
Nicely done. You painted a perfect picture of your space with your words. And the use of compass as metaphor was brilliant!