Tag: poetry workshop

Soul Sunday

Good morning. I hope that you have a nice warm cup of coffee (or whatever your favorite morning beverage is) right near you, as you read this post. Sundays are for poetry on the blog. I also hope that you have a neat little notebook and a pen that you particularly love to write with, right next to your neat little notebook. I hope that you plan to write yourself a poem this quiet, beautiful morning. Poems are love notes to yourself.

Years ago I wrote a blog post that people seemed to really like and relate to, as it pops up as being read again and again, throughout the years. Here it is, if you are interested: https://kellyfoota.com/?s=thank+yourself or you can just search “Thank Yourself” on my blog search function.

I found this poem yesterday by a writer on Twitter, that has that same tone of my blog post. I love it, and as April begins, it’s a good poem to start the month out with, for sure (credit: @ronwritings, Twitter):

Another post I noticed on Twitter yesterday, was a post by Dr. Nicole LaPera. She asked her followers: “When was your first memory of feeling loved?” It hurt my heart, to read so many posts by readers that stated that it took well into their early adulthoods to feel loved. Some people posted that they have never felt loved. After reading a few of these tweets, I went right to our family chat, sent my family a picture of that tweet, and I wrote to my four children: “I don’t know how you guys would answer this, but I hope that you know how much your Dad and I love you, from the very start. Where you’d you get your start?” and then I added six heart emojis. And that last question is an inside family joke. Of course, this text message then turned into a family lovefest, but it honestly wasn’t a fishing expedition of mine. I wanted to be sure that my children feel loved. People need to know they are loved.

People need love. People need to feel love, and to feel loved. Why would we ever be stingy about sharing the most abundant and renewable force of energy that exists in our world? Today, love yourself. Show love to people. Be love. Feel love. It’s everywhere and it’s everything.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. I am a fledgling poet. Poetry is not my first language in writing. Still I enjoy the process of trying to write poetry, and I believe that in attempting to write poems, channels develop to the center of my creative flow. No matter what your first creative language is, in writing, or in any of the other arts, try writing a poem today. It may spring a little channel to parts of you, earlier unknown. Today’s poem starts with a quote I read from the film, Elegy. (see the highlighted stanzas). I gave myself an “assignment” to turn this quote into a poem. Assign yourself something creative today. This will help you to “grow up” and to mature in beautiful, ageless ways.

Don’t worry about growing old.

Worry about growing up.

To gain maturity, takes a level of bold.

Whereas aging can be done by many a pup.

The wise elders are worth their weight in gold.

Becoming the lessons of their tests, sup by sup.

While still a blessing, many of us will grow old.

But in the circle of enlightened, few will make up.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Sundays are poetry day on the blog. I experienced an incident recently that inspired the poem that I wrote below. Pick a recent event in your life that sticks with you, and commemorate and honor it with a poem. This is what poets do. And all of us are poets in our own way.

You showed up with tact and grace.

I showed up with “in your face.”

Luckily, I took the pause.

I kept the words between my jaws.

I watched you communicate what I wanted to say,

But peppered with kindness and love was your way.

It’s great to be an old dog learning new tricks.

From the other old dogs, who are in the mix.

What is the purpose of the friends in your life?

Besides entertainment and support for your strife?

Friends help you to learn to be a better you.

They often see the better you, before you even do.

Friends are mirrors, travel companions, and vessels of love,

Friends are gifts you give to yourself, with help from above.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poems are mysteriously personal. As the poet Zaynab writes: “Everyone goes to the same poem, at the same time, same point, same verb, the difference is the feeling”. I choose not to share the backstory of this poem that I have just written. Bring your own story to it. That’s what makes poetry so intimate and flexible. And write yourself a poem. It’s a beautiful thing to be vulnerable with yourself.

I thought by your absence,

That you were long gone.

No longer tethered to the past.

Fully free and ensconced in a life

Foreign to any of us.

But now I see that by you following her,

So quickly into the unknown, that

You were more attached to her,

than any of us.

The cords were never cut.

Such a brave front you both liked to carry,

to shelter your bruised and vulnerable and wounded hearts.

When you soon meet again,

the bravados will have fallen,

and the healed hearts will be as One,

with all of the other healed hearts,

that beat soundly and steadily,

for the whole of us,

beyond the veil.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to Sunday on the blog, a day devoted to poetry. Poetry is everywhere. It’s in our songs, in our descriptions of things, and in the cadence of our movements. And the biggest misnomer that people have about poetry is that it is SO SERIOUS. Haven’t we all read several of Dr. Seuss’ books?! Below is one of my favorite actresses reciting a poem. Enjoy! And write yourself a silly poem today or speak out loud one of your favorite songs in a serious, poetical tone. Make yourself and your loved ones laugh. What could be better for your soul?

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good morning. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poetry is creative wordplay. Poetry is a way to try to explain the unexplainable with words, without limiting whatever it is, with words. In that sense, poetry is a paradox. Use a little bit of today to write a poem. Have a poetry workshop moment. It will be an excellent use of your time, I promise. Below is a poem I really like, written by Gregory Orr and also a poem I really like, written by me.

Yours

It’s taken me a lifetime to dust you off,

And to bring you home, and to nurture you,

And share in your joy at all of many of life’s little delights.

It’s taken me a lifetime to give you the acceptance,

And understanding, and compassion and care,

You’ve craved, and yearned for, and fully deserved.

Beating steadily, strongly, solidly forward into time,

I give to you my heart, my precious inner child,

For now I realize, it was also yours, all along.

Soul Sunday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Last night we attended my husband’s annual company Christmas/Holidays party. Although it hasn’t been so annual lately. Due to Covid and whatnot, this was the first Christmas party the company has had in three years. We had a marvelous time. However, since this three year break, I am starting to realize that my husband and I are now fully in the “elders camp” at company parties. All of those older people at business functions that I used to look up to, defer to, feel a little nervous around, and also admittedly, sometimes crank about with my other younger associates, are now “us”. We are the elder people. It doesn’t help that our neighbor’s grandson, and a handsome young man who used to carpool to soccer with my son, in their stinky, sweaty cleats, smelling up my SUV, are now young, energetic executives at this company. The thing is, I still feel like that young woman whom I once was, trying to impress my elders at the company parties. And now that I am “an elder”, I realize how silly and unnecessary that is to do. I just delight in seeing young people making their paths in this world. I’m excited for them and their futures and I realize that I have just as much to learn from them as they do from me.

Okay, that paragraph was a digression from what Sundays on the blog are truly about. (I feel a little distractible today.) Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. When I opened up the computer today, I read this quote from Alan Cohen: “If you feel overwhelmed by responsibility, you have assumed more than what truly belongs to you.” This prompted me to look up some poems written about “lightening the load.” We were up late last night, so I don’t have the bandwidth to write a poem of my own yet this morning. The cobwebs have not been cleared. However these two poems popped up on my search and both of them spoke to me. I hope they connect with you, as well. Have a beautiful, peaceful, meaningful day. See you tomorrow.

Credit: Celestial Sciolla
by Arundhati Chowdhury

Soul Sunday

Good morning. You’ve earned some peace in your life, don’t you think. Just for today, take it. Accept peace. Peace accepts. If you accept the moment, peace follows. Believe that you are right where you are supposed to be in your life’s journey. Because you are right where you are supposed to be.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Poetry comes out of the most accepting, open place/space in the poet’s heart. Poetry allows for emotion, imagination, wonder and truth. Today, I am sharing a delightful poem about autumn leaves, written in the 1800s, by the American children’s writer, Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who went by the pen name, Susan Coolidge. Reading it, I feel like a curious, wondrous little kid again. That’s what good writing does. Good writing intrigues you, and then transports you.

Enjoy this poem. Write one of your own. Have a lovely Sunday.

How the Leaves Came Down by Susan Coolidge

I’ll tell you how the leaves came down.
  The great Tree to his children said,
“You’re getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown,
  Yes, very sleepy, little Red;
  It is quite time you went to bed.”

“Ah!” begged each silly, pouting leaf,
  “Let us a little longer May;
Dear Father Tree, behold our grief,
  ‘Tis such a very pleasant day
We do not want to go away.”

So, just for one more merry day
  To the great Tree the leaflets clung,
Frolicked and danced and had their way,
  Upon the autumn breezes swung,
  Whispering all their sports among,

“Perhaps the great Tree will forget
  And let us stay until the spring
If we all beg and coax and fret.”
  But the great Tree did no such thing;
  He smiled to hear their whispering.

“Come, children all, to bed,” he cried;
  And ere the leaves could urge their prayer
He shook his head, and far and wide,
  Fluttering and rustling everywhere,
  Down sped the leaflets through the air.

I saw them; on the ground they lay,
  Golden and red, a huddled swarm,
Waiting till one from far away,
  White bed-clothes heaped upon her arm,
  Should come to wrap them safe and warm.

The great bare Tree looked down and smiled.
  “Good-night, dear little leaves” he said;
And from below each sleepy child
  Replied “Good-night,” and murmured,
  “It is so nice to go to bed.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. It feels so good to be sitting in my own little writing corner, in my comfortable home with the beautiful, still sunlight filtering in. It feels so good to be unscheduled after a lovely, restorative night’s sleep. My husband is headed out on his bicycle. Riding his bike is one of my husband’s favorite things to do. I am writing and reading and sipping coffee, so I am utterly exhilarated, in the process of doing my favorite things. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog, and in my own little corner of contentment (both inside and outside), this is the poem that popped out of me (see below). What poems are trying to pop out of you? Put pen to paper, or hands to keyboard and give it a whirl. What a wonderful way to get to know yourself better!

CONTENTMENT

“What is contentment?” In meditation, she asked.

And from something inside of her, the answer was grasped.

Contentment is feeding your passions,

With time and energy and focus and love.

Yes, just feed your passions with all of the above.

Well-fed passions equal contentment, it’s true.

When you do this, you’ll find your purpose anew.

Ah, so now I clearly can see,

Contentment is living purposefully.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good morning. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. It is not lost on me that Sunday is a big football day. My husband and two of my sons LOVE football. I enjoy watching it with them, when the football teams that are playing, are teams that I actually care about. In our town, the biggest football drama is off of the field. Everyone is talking about Tom Brady’s and Gisele Bündchen’s disintegrating marriage. There is a saying that women marry men, with the hopes of changing the men, and men marry women with the hopes that the women will never change. Who knew that this saying probably applies to two of the most beautiful, talented, richest, famous people in this world, who at one time also seemed to have the “perfect relationship”? I wrote this poem this morning. It is my view of what Gisele might be thinking and feeling about her relationship.

HER

I wanted you to pick me,

And us,

And everything that we created,

With us, between us, through us.

But instead you picked her,

In all of her ferocious glory.

So dangerous, she could kill you.

On any given Sunday.

But you can’t let her go.

She makes you feel like a god.

I wanted you to pick me,

or at least, I wanted you to pick us,

And everything that we created.

But instead, you picked you.