Tag: poetry

Soul Sunday

Hello, dear hearts. I was reading an essay about a writer who would go to her grandparents’ Kentucky home every summer and her favorite memory of that precious time in her childhood, is that everyone would call each other “dear heart.” It’s so interesting, when we look back at our lives, to see what memories really mean something to us and seem to stick out, as defining moments. Often, it’s the most seemingly inconsequential happenings that really make the biggest mark on our lives. When this coronavirus situation has finally passed, we will all just hold tidbits of memories and emotions that will forever mark this time in our lives. And even though we are all collectively experiencing much of the same event, we will all memorialize it differently, with a few random aspects of it all, that will be forever seared into our minds and into our hearts.

My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry. It is poetry workshop day at Adulting – Second Half. Here’s my poem for the day. Please gift us with your melodious, soul flowing words, in my Comments section. Thank you and bless you, dear hearts.

Home

The charming abode with the white picket fence,

Filled with apple pies and common decency,

Once became so unremarkable that it bored people to tears.

But in times of raging storms and bewildering uncertainty,

We seek the lovely, well-kept, placid cottage,

Brimming with integrity and the solidity of a foundation

Made from the salt of the earth.

And yet its location is not so easy to find anymore.

It turns out that the common places, weren’t so common.

They were precious. They got overshadowed by Darkness’ need,

for ravenous attention and the insatiable hunger to overtake.

Still, the navigation system lies within, to bring us back,

To the windy path, protected by the wise elders of trees,

And at the end of the path, is the place of our heartland,

That has always been there, with doors wide open,

Beckoning us in with a welcoming, warm embrace.

Reminding us that we can always return to the comfort

Of the indefatigable sunlit energy that sustains the lovely retreat,

This wholesome, beautiful, light-filled, sustainable cottage of our hearts.

Soul Sunday

Good morning, friends and readers. Today is our poetry workshop day. Today is when the words just come out of you, and you just try to put them into some kind of playful form. It’s our free-wheeling creative wordplay day. No judgment. No critiquing. Just getting it out there, all in fun. Please share your poems in my Comments section. Here is my poem for today:

Our Loves

You love to fish,

Like I love to write.

You throw your line into the deep waters,

With wonderment of what will be brought to the surface.

As do I.

In the meantime, you sit peacefully with yourself,

Just breathing, just waiting, just expecting,

Yet not knowing really what to expect.

As do I.

Sometimes the line never moves.

Nothing is ever felt.

Not even a nibble.

But for the days when the line reaches the bottom depths,

And catches on to something so full of life and movement and veracity,

And though difficult to bring it in, you actually feel one with the life process of it all,

That’s what keeps you hooked on fishing.

That’s what keeps me hooked on writing.

You love to fish,

Like I love to write.

The Power of Water

A good friend of mine often reminds us to take the time to fill our own buckets. You’ve got nothing to pour for anyone else, if you don’t fill up your own bucket first. Nature has been such a soothing comfort during these unusual times. Water, in particular is Nature’s great healer, especially during the relentlessly hot summer months. My husband and I were purchasing some river rocks at a local pond store yesterday. By one of the store’s many beautiful, tranquil ponds, filled with sleek and striking koi fish, the owners had posted a poem. I think that it is an all together lovely poem. Please enjoy reading the poem and every time that you come in contact with water today, may you feel the healing, cleansing, reviving, calming, saturating, renewing blessing that water gives to us, every single day.

Soul Sunday

I am heading out on an early morning boating excursion. My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. I’m barely awake. My poem will arrive on the site later today, when the fog clears from my mind. In the meantime, please share your poems in my Comments section. And come back for my poem, later in the day, as you are slowly unwinding from the weekend. I’m sorry for the delay. Love, peace and health.

****Okay, it’s about 3:15 pm here in Florida today. Boating was cut a little short due to storms. If you typically find storms disturbing, while you are resting on your couch, in your safe, warm, snug home, I can assure you that watching lightning strike, while you are floating around in a boat (which is really just a teeny little dry hole, in a vast expanse of water), takes storm watching (and the uncontrollable shaking that comes from being frightened ) to a whole new level. Nonetheless, we got out safely. This 2020 year does not need, nor does it require, any more over the top excitement for us, nor for anybody else!!

Here’s my Soul Sunday poem, as promised. Where are yours poems???

Chin Up Buttercup

Chin Up Buttercup, stop lamenting on the bad news – virus outbreaks, breathless black men, toppled statues, death and sadness, puppy potty training going nowhere but wet, helplessness in a heap of overwhelming pile of unrest, pining away for seeing loved ones, arguments from too much togetherness, exhaustion from wondering where does this all lead . . . .

Where does this all lead? And what part do I play in it all? Am I doing everything I can?

Chin Up Buttercup, start focusing on the good news – vaccines in the works, healthy social change happening/long in coming, life and hope, happiness is a warm puppy snuggled in your arms, a greater Source to hand the pile of problems over to fix, amazing technology to keep loved ones close by, when you have people to argue with, all that really means is that you are not alone and you are all learning the beautiful virtues of patience and understanding, energy from curiosity that where this all leads will be truly . . . . .

WONDERFUL.

Chin Up Buttercup.

Everything’s going to be okay.

Soul Sunday

Happy Father’s Day!! I am blessed by the men in my life. As a woman, I understand that not everyone can say that, so I am utterly and completely grateful. New readers, Sundays are devoted to poetry. On Sundays, I either write a poem or share a poem written by someone else and I strongly encourage you to add your poems in my Comments section. I consider Sundays to be a poetry workshop day for us. There is no judgment, just creative wordplay and word flow. Please see previous Sunday posts for more poetry to feed your soul.

To My Husband and the Father of My Children

When I fell in love with you

We were just kids ourselves.

Now our own children are mostly grown.

Yet . . . .

With all of your accomplishments,

With all of your roguish competitiveness,

With all of your dreams and dedication,

There was never, ever a doubt in my mind,

That our family was the heart of it all, for you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Soul Sunday

Good morning, friends. It’s a lovely sunny Sunday morning here which is so refreshing because we have had quite a bit of rain here lately. It makes me feel peaceful and hopeful. New readers, Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. On Sundays, I either share a poem I have written or I share a poem written by someone else. Please share your poetry with me and other readers, in the Comments section. Today’s poem is from a book of poetry by Kevin Anderson. I love his poetry because it follows the same format of adding to and thus, cleverly changing an original thought or idea, to something more profound. This poem is from the book Now is Where God Lives.

Don’t talk about great souls.

Don’t talk about great souls – become one!

Don’t talk about great souls.

Become one

with all.

Don’t talk about great souls.

Become one

with all

great souls who have embodied the Great Soul.

Soul Sunday

Hi friends. Welcome to Soul Sunday. My regular readers know and understand that Sundays are dedicated to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. I like to call it a poetry workshop. Most of the time, I write a poem or I reprint another author’s poem which has moved me. I strongly encourage my readers to share your own poetry in my Comments section. We don’t critique. We just share and enjoy, each other’s intriguing word play.

I was feeling a little abstract with today’s poem that I wrote. Here is my sharing for today. Please enjoy it and have a peaceful, beautiful day!

Epiphany

It appears that your true self has been leaking out of you, your whole life

But you never noticed the clues.

The power and the majesty and the synchronicities have left a trail

Of obvious and tantalizing bread crumbs

But you weren’t hungry enough to follow them, nor to realize,

that the crumbs created the clear pathway, to what you were always seeking.

Perhaps you were too distracted or perhaps you didn’t realize that the very diversions themselves,

Were actually what tied everything together into a fascinating, obvious conclusion.

You were leaving yourself your own hints, but you never knew that they applied,

to the greatest, most intriguing mystery of your life . . . . yourself.

Sunday Soul

Hi readers. I’m terribly sorry to be late posting today. Sundays are a big readership day for me and I appreciate that fact. I think people like poetry more than they pretend to like it. I’m late because I got myself involved in a “little” painting job this weekend. I decided to paint some window panes. The job seemed simple and painless, enough. Ha! I decided to complete the finishing touches this morning before the hot Florida sun baked even more dark bronze-y paint into my skin. I look like a leopard.

New readers, Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Poetry is the unedited, free-flowing sounds of our souls. I already got my creative juices out by painting this morning, so I am going to reprint a poem today, that you may have seen already. The poem has gone viral and many believed that it was written by an author during the 1919 Pandemic. Alas, this is not true. It was actually written in March of 2020 by a chaplain from Wisconsin named Kitty O’Meara. It is untitled and it is beautiful. Please add your poems (your writings or someone else’s writings) to the Comments section. Here is the lovely words of a very much alive, Kitty O’Meara:

By Kitty O’Meara
And the people stayed home.
And read books, and listened, and rested,
and exercised, and made art, and played games,
and learned new ways of being, and were still.
And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.
Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living in ignorant,
dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways,
the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again,
they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images,
and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully,
as they had been healed.

Soul Sunday

“I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift – a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods.” – Max Ehrmann

So yesterday I was going through some old books of mine and I found a lovely poem by the heralded author and poet, Max Ehrmann. This is an old poem. Ehrmann wrote it in 1927 and its worldwide popularity started around the 1950s, years after Ehrmann’s death. The poem is called Desiderata which is Latin for “things that are yearned for.” As my regular readers know, Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Typically, I write a poem, or I find a poem by someone else that I want to share. I ask that you share your poetry in the Comments section. This is not a critique session. This is a safe outpouring of our feelings in the form of words. Please share. Your poems are precious gifts to yourself and to us. Today, my offering is just to share Desiderata by Max Ehrmann because the poem holds particular poignancy in times like these, especially.

Desiderata | Desiderata poem, Desiderata, Words

Soul Sunday

It struck me the other day that this is probably the first time in my life when I have actually felt more vulnerable due to my age. I’m approaching 50. This “dawning” was a middle age turning point for me. It was one of those awakening moments that reminded me that I really am headed into the autumn of my life. My heart goes out to you all who are in your 60s and beyond. It must be terrifying, at times, concerning the coronavirus. I feel for you.

Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Please publish your poems in my Comments section. This is a poetry workshop, where we should all feel safe to share, our free flow of thoughts. Here’s my poem for the day:

The Trick

Who knew that we were all part of a fantastic illusion?

We were the white rabbits and the silk scarves,

in a grand sleight of the hand.

We thought that we were in on the trick,

Winking, knowing how the “magic” works.

We, as lovely assistants, sometimes smirked at the Magician,

Sneered at the fools in the audience,

Only to be brought to our knees,

By a horrific force, too tiny to even be seen.

Now we are all in this together,

Humbled by the unknown,

No longer wishing to just be entertained,

No longer full of pride and disdain,

Just praying for the real magic to fix this all,

In order for us to be wholly healed,

Sewing together all of our parts that have been sawed apart,

And for the trick to be over, so that the real magic can begin . . .