My blog is devoted to poetry on Sundays. Poetry has a way of penetrating one’s emotions like no other form of communication. I read this poem, which I am going to share below, the day after the Texas elementary school shooting massacre. When I looked for a good copy of it to share today on the blog, I found it in the form of a Ted Talk. I can think of no better poem to share today than The Opposites Game by Brendan Constantine:
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning, readers. Today is poetry day on the blog. It’s always fun to play with words and that is what poetry is – just playing with words. When our children are little, and they are trying to communicate, we often say to them, “Use your words.” Today I say, “Play with your words.” Here is what came out of my own word play today (Have a wonderful rest of your weekend!! Stay in the moment and savor it all.):
When you were my baby girl, I fondly gazed at your tiny toes,
And when you were a little girl, I dressed you up in bows.
When you were in middle school, I soothed your highs and lows,
And when you were in high school, we loved shopping for your clothes,
Watching you graduate yesterday, my face glows and my heart grows,
You are a golden girl who will have a wonderful life, this your mother knows.
Happy Mother’s Day!!! I know quite a few of my readers out there are mothers like me. There is no experience out there like mothering, is there? Mothering brings out your fiercest side, and yet also your most fearful side, all at the same time. Mothering shows you the depth and the power of your love, and yet also the fragile petals of your own vulnerability. You enter into mothering, willingly and enthusiastically signing on to the dotted line of a lifelong contract, agreeing to something that you really have no idea actually what to expect, and just when you think that you have it all figured out, the seasons change and who you are as a woman and who you are as a mother changes with those seasons, and this metamorphosis happens, again and again, throughout your entire life. It’s daunting and extraordinary. Mothering is the most amazing, overwhelming, vital adventure of my life and I couldn’t be more grateful to the four beautiful souls who call me their mother, for this incredible journey and experience of mothering them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Much like Shel Silverstein’s book, The Giving Tree is supposed to be an allegory of parenting and unconditional love, I think that this beautiful poem by Rumi is the perfect allegory to the required selflessness that comes from being a mother:
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning! Happy May Day! Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit (represents good luck on the first day of any month for superstitious people like me) We have had an eventful weekend. My daughter truly enjoyed herself at her senior prom last night, and today we are bringing home our youngest son from his university for the summer. I haven’t had too much time to focus my mind on writing poetry. My brain seems stuck on “to-do” lists lately. My regular readers know that my blog is all about poetry on Sundays. Poetry is the language of the soul. Poetry is each of our own personal languages. Write yourself a poem today. You won’t regret it. I’ll probably doodle a poem on the way home from the university later this evening. But since I must get on the road soon, here is a poem I found on the internet that marks the merry month of May. May is a special, gentle, kind, warm month, isn’t it? It lovingly marks so many beautiful endings like graduations, and the end of spring, but also exciting, happy beginnings like the delicious, anticipatory start of summer. Here is today’s poem:
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. No problems logging on today, thank goodness! Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I either write a poem or I share a poem that I have found to be intriguing and mystifying. I hope that you will spend some time today playing with your own words. Poetry is a great way to release what you feel, and your poem only has to make sense to you. Today’s poem is written by Alex Dimitrov (who is one half of the infamous Astropoets). If you go to his Twitter page you can find many of his wonderful poems. (@alexdimitrov) Have a delightful day!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I thought of this poem yesterday, as I was pondering during a car ride, about just how few current and historical figures any of us know anything about. Currently, there are over 7.5 billion people in this world. How many of these people who you know, do you know by sight? And even if you know a sprinkling of public and “famous” people by sight, do your children know them? Do your parents? Will your great grandchildren recognize these “famous” people? Do people on the other side of our world know these “famous” people? Ego tricks us into believing that our individual selves are so incredibly important, and in a sense, we are extremely important to the people who love us, and who share experiences with us. Still, in the end, all that is left of any of us, that makes any kind of mark on our world’s history, are our shared and collective actions and inactions. We are just one tiny dot of energy that helps to create this One evolving experience called Life. Here is my poem:
The heart of the story is this,
The actions have all of the significance,
The actions are what creates the story of the world.
The people who do the actions are rather insignificant.
The actions have all of the significance.
The characters are interesting, but they are just the tools,
For making the actions to happen and to occur.
Actions create our history.
Love is an action.
We all create Love.
We are Love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Yesterday, I took my own advice and I searched “epilepsy” on my blog and I read some of what my son, myself and my family had gone through last fall. And I was utterly shocked to remember how differently I felt, than I do right now, with my son’s epilepsy stabilized and things going generally well for me and for my family. I have always preached to myself, and to my family and friends, and to you readers of the blog, that your life is the endless blue sky, and no matter how dark and torrential and scary and unrelenting they be, the storm clouds always, always pass. The human spirit is amazingly hopeful and resilient and irrepressible. Look at holocaust survivors. Look at wounded soldiers. Look at prisoners of war. Look at the survivors everywhere. We are all survivors of different storms and we shine. We look to the sun, and we reflect the hopeful sunshine. We shine through. Our peaceful, hopeful, sanguine feelings come back when the storm clouds finally pass on by.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Today, I didn’t have a poem in my heart to write. So, in the spirit of the strong and the valiant and the hopeful, yet repressed people of the world, I thought that I would look up poems about sunflowers. There are hundreds of poems about sunflowers listed on Google. This one spoke to me. I recommend that you look up the one that speaks to you. Or better yet, write it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The other day, a few members of my family and I were crowded around my phone, looking for a particular photo from a particular trip. As we were scrolling through my pictures, it became evident to all of us that almost half of my photo roll contained screenshots of words, and quotes, and excerpts from books and short poems. We all laughed. It was one of those moments that you get a true screenshot of your own self, and what truly moves you and captures your attention. Today, use this day to discover yourself. Scroll through your picture roll. Be a sleuth. Look at the clues. Open the doors. Look at the patterns. Feel what feels right. Feel what feels wrong, and change it. Fall in love with yourself. Make a point to see what those who know the real you, and who love the real you, love about you, and then, decide to heartily agree with them.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Here is my poem for the day:
“I wonder”
I wonder what this day would look like,
if half of it wasn’t crying in lament about the past,
All of the old stories and questions rehashed and rehashed.
I wonder what this day would look like,
if half of it wasn’t spent in worry about the times ahead,
filled with concern, and a queasy stomach consumed with dread.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. It feels like a particularly soulful, hopeful Sunday. My friend sent a video of the most adorable little bird creating a nest in her tree this morning. Nature is hope. Nature continues no matter what. Nature keeps doing its natural thing, oblivious to wars and politics and disasters. Nature is truly the physical manifestation of hope.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I hope that you write a poem today. As Hemingway states, writing is clearing. Here is my poem for today:
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. What I love about most of my weekends these days, (now that my children are mostly grown and independent) is that I can live these weekend days through my most spontaneous nature. I feel free to live moment-by-moment, following my whims and my fancies and my curiosities more than I have been able to do (or more honestly, allowed myself to do), for most of my adult life. So much of today can be unstudied and unplanned. I can let my most inner impulses and inclinations lead the way. This is why Sunday is devoted to poetry on my blog. Poetry is a more spontaneous form of writing than other forms of communication. Poetry reminds me of those mystery grab bags you buy for a set amount of money with “???” written all over them. The delight in these bags is the excited, anticipation of what may be inside. There is no expectation of what could be in the bags, so curiosity and a sense of fun are the main emotions of the experience. In Japan, many stores offer these mystery bags at the beginning of each year. These “lucky bags” are called fukubukuro. Poetry is the fukubukuro (even this word rhymes!) of our written communication! Indulge in poetry today. Delight in the ways that you discover yourself more fully, by seeing what comes out of your heart, in written form! Here’s my poem for today:
This day is your painting,
your poem,
your living NFT.
It is uniquely yours.
The emotions, the observations, the experiences, the prayers, the meditations, the creations, the relations, the rest, the activity, the obsessions, the possessions, the delicacies, the piquancies, and the frequencies that you tune into today, are all of yours.
This day is your poem.
Your living, breathing poem.
What does it say?
What does it mean?
What will it bring to tomorrow’s on-going poetry in motion?
