Hello, loves. I am happy that you are here with me. Welcome to Soul Sunday. On Sundays, I wax poetic. I write a poem or I share a poem by another poet. I think that poems open you up to your own soul better than any other kind of writing. Poems often bypass the analytical mind and head straight to the heart. Here’s your assignment: Write a poem today. Just start writing. You may be amazed with what talents you possess! You will feel better and clever and mysterious and interesting. You will feel more connected to your deepest self, and that is a wonderful way to start a week.
The Course
The Teacher arrived and opened his familiar, worn lesson book,
I winced, but The Teacher smiled and asked me to take another look.
I thought that I already mastered the lesson (many times before).
But The Teacher reminded me that there is always something more.
The Lesson is always the simple, solid same, but the learner is ever shifting.
The learner comes with new, fresh eyes to grasp what The Lesson is now gifting.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning, my dearest readers. I hope that this Sunday finds you well. I devote Sundays to poetry. I write a poem and I courageously put my poem out there into the ethersphere, for no other reason than I can. And so can you. The world never died from bad poetry, and many worlds have been inspired by good poetry. Poetry is a release for the writer, and a spark of thought for the reader. Be brave and bold. Write a poem today and put it out there for others to catch your spirit. Here is my poem for today:
August
I suppose that August was created in order to
Help me to empathize with my food.
August is like those last couple minutes of cooking
Sundays, on the blog, are devoted to poetry. Writing in prose feels like communicating with others, whereas writing poetry feels like communicating with oneself. When I write in prose, I am trying to express myself in a way that I better understand myself and my feelings, and I hope that this expression, clearly communicates what I am thinking and knowing and feeling about anything or any circumstance. Prose desires validation and attention and clear articulation. On the other hand, poetry is really the most private form of writing. It is always open-ended, and deeply affected by individual interpretation. Prose is like a portrait painting, and poetry is more like abstract art. Write yourself a poem today. You deserve one. Here is my poem for today:
Sometimes, some days a poem just doesn’t happen
The riddle of where it is, is like a mermaid’s fin.
It prefers to stay a mystery below the surface,
An unhealed wound, without a kiss.
Bringing it to light feels too harsh and too soon.
So the sweet little poem, grows safely in its private cocoon.
So today, when you arrived here, you did not get a poem.
Instead, you got the poet.
She is here, not because of her words, but because of her love for you,
I hope that you deeply know it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Welcome to the quietest, most introspective day on the blog. Welcome to our poetry workshop. What is the song of your soul? Write a poem. You’ll find out.
Yesterday, my husband and I were making newspaper bricks which he uses as firestarters for his very simple, old-school grill. My husband loves to read the WSJ in paper form, but I think that he has an Earth Mother guilt complex about this. (We had compost piles long before compost piles became a hipster status symbol.) Therefore, to alleviate his conscience, my husband bought this cool contraption on Amazon that condenses wet newspapers into paper bricks. Our back porch is a currently a brick drying platform, and our hands have a not so attractive grayish tinge to them. (And these are the things that make me love him, and “us”, like I do.) As we were placing the papers into the water bucket, my husband stopped what he was doing and handed a sheet of the newspaper to me. He and I both knew that it had to be one of Soul Sunday’s poems. This one is by the great writer, Walt Whitman:
I have a poem of my own to share today, too. Here it is:
Confession to My Children
My dearest children,
For years I have fervently prayed for your strength, and your health, and your safety, and your vitality, and your happiness, and your sense of purpose, and your creativity, and your faith, but I often left out one crucial element in my prayers.
I often forgot to pray for myself.
I often forgot to surrender.
I forgot to pray for guidance on how to help you with your strength, and your health, and your safety, and your vitality, and your happiness, and your sense of purpose, and your creativity and your faith.
I often forgot to ask God for my own strength, and health, and safety, and vitality and happiness, and sense of purpose, and creativity and faith, so that God could work through me, to best mother you. And to best be a model for you.
In my prayers, I often acted as if I had to make a choice. I always chose you, arrogantly forgetting that God has no hierarchies. Love is all.
By hinging all of my abundance on your abundance, I erased me. And I burdened you. And I disrespected God.
Luckily, God doesn’t wait for permission to work through our lives. God never leaves. God works quietly. My prayers are always for you, my deepest loves, but they are also for me, too. We are all God’s children. And now, I often just pray for my eyes to be opened to the all-encompassing Love which gently and evenly holds All of us, dear beyond measure.
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. I hope that you are in a peaceful, comfortable, allowing state of being right now. My friend recently reminded me of the popular quote by Dr. Seuss, as shown above. I repeated it a few times to my family, as we were in the airport, on our way home, from the wonderful, and highly anticipated summer family vacation that we had just experienced together. I thought to myself that the quote is also rather apropos for times that are awful in life, and then finally over, too. It would just be the quote in reverse, “Don’t cry because it happened. Smile because it is over.”
Anyway, back to business: Sundays are devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Poetry is the attempt to put emotion into words, like no other form of writing can. Write a poem today. Just start writing out your feelings, with no rhyme or reason (pun intended). You may surprise yourself by how beautiful and poignant your words that describe an element of your life’s experience can be. I consider Sundays to be an experimental poetry workshop for all of us. Here is my poem for today:
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
My regular readers know that Sundays are dedicated to poetry here at the blog. On Sundays, I typically write a poem or I share a poem, written by someone else, which has moved me or delighted me. Today, I’m feeling a little silly and cheeky and I think that my poem reflects my mood. I think that poetry is perhaps the most mood reflective out all of our writing styles. You can’t keep emotion and mood out of poetry.
“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!” – Dr. Seuss
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.“- Dr. Seuss
Here’s my poem for today:
Saturday Afternoon
I spent all yesterday afternoon reading magazines,
And this is the wisdom that this experience gleans:
Davy Crockett said, “Be sure you’re right and then go ahead.”
Instead of scooping ice cream, take a knife and slice it up like bread.
What are the favorite things of Dolly Parton, who calls her own personal style “glamorous trash”?
She likes to buy Pond’s cold cream, Sharpies, legal pads, and Folgers with some of her hard-earned cash.
When answering “What’s the first thing you do when you get home from a trip?”
My favorite answer was from a reader, Suzanne Nord, with this excellent quip:
“It depends. If I traveled without my family, I hug them all. If I traveled with my family, I hide from them.”
I got inspired by the writings of Rami Shapiro, my favorite rabbi,
And I put a few new, fun products on my list, to buy and to try.
I clipped out some pictures, affirmations, exercises and beautiful art.
Reading magazines will never necessarily make one brilliant and smart.
Still, reading periodicals makes for a light and pleasant afternoon.
It’s good to relax. It’s not every day, that you have to shoot for the moon.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Happy Father’s Day! Happy Soul Sunday. My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry. The dictionary says this about poetry: “a quality of beauty and intensity of emotion regarded as characteristic of poems.” I think what makes poems special, is that despite the fact that poems are often some of the shortest forms of writing, they hold so much “intensity of emotion”. Poems are powerful in their sensitivities. Poems often have the ability to deliver a big gut punch, or an instant throat lump, or a swift connection to our inner knowing. Poetry is potent. Here is my poem for today:
When your seldom seen tears, flowed at the birth of M,
When you became G’s biggest bussing fan, at Daddy’s Grill.
When you held our giant man-child W, like a baby,
In an attempt to transfer strength and take away the pain.
When you proudly became Dancing Dinosaur,
at the Guides meetings with our baby girl.
When you held every baby, against your big broad chest,
On every vacation, to give them and me, the most lovely rests of our lives.
These are the moments that make me in awe of you.
These are the moments that remind me why I love you like I do.
Your love encompasses our family with your devotion,
Like the warmest blanket, on a cool, dark night.
I am so grateful that every one of them, has a part of you inside.
You have selflessly given each of them, a big chunk of your beautiful heart.
And that is why I know they will always be safe and loved,
Because I listen to your strong and steady and reliable heartbeat,
Every night. It is the most calming, lovely sound in the world, to me.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning, soul mates. My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry at Adulting – Second Half. On Sundays, I either write a poem or I share a poem written by another poet. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Shakespeare’s a poet, and doesn’t know it”? To me, this phrase means that when you speak or write from the heart, in your own unique voice, you are creating poetry, often without even realizing it. You are a poet. Let the words flow on to the page, and read them to yourself. I think that you will be amazed. Please feel free and comfortable, to share the poems that you write, here in my Comments section. It is generous and brave to share what is written and transcribed from your heart. Here’s my poem for today:
Bromeliad
I purchased you for a few dollars, a little pink plant, in a little pink pot.
“Support Breast Cancer Awareness” the courageous sign read, and I thought,
“Yes, that feels right.”
I thought that they chose you, for your lovely color, to match their ribbon of pink.
But now I realize, like so many other times, I was wrong with what I think.
This is what I now know, from the deepest depths of my soul:
You were chosen for your health, vitality, fertility, resilience, strength and hope.
I can’t keep you down, my little pink plant, in a little pink pot.
You refuse to look away from the sun, you decline to rot.
Instead, you multiply.
You reach new heights.
You continue to grow, no matter where you are planted.
You are beautiful.
You are ALIVE.
You are health, vitality, fertility, resilience, strength and hope.
Thank you for being such a vital member of my garden’s colorful shower.
Your lessons are as lovely as your grand, bursting, bold, pink flower.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning, soulmates. As my regular readers know, Sunday is devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Poems are soultalk. Poems evoke more emotion and wonder and intimacy than your average prose. Write a poem today. Share it in my Comments, if you like. On Sundays, sometimes I write a poem and sometimes I share a poem. Today I will try to do both. The above poem, “Trees”, by Joyce Kilmer is a classic, and it is wonderful. Incidentally, Joyce Kilmer was an American man and sadly, he was killed in action, during World War I. Here is my poem for the day:
“The Seekers”
Two treasure hunters scour the fruitful land,
Eager to see what bounty they can command.
They dredge the sea, for ancient coins, and brilliant jewels.
One seeker is single minded with his vision and his tools.
He fills his ornate box with plenty of wealth and weight.
His overspilling bounty is his focused life’s work’s fate.
The other seeker is easily distracted by the beauty all around him,
Often instead of searching in waters, he chooses to softly swim.
He takes time to nourish the creatures that share his borrowed space.
He stares at the starry skies, in wonder of this magical place.
Who in the end, ends up with the greatest treasure?
I suppose it all depends on how you choose to measure.
Seeker one is tethered to a heavy, worldly treasure, with which is hard to part,
Whereas seeker two, is much lighter. His wondrous treasure is stored within his heart.
Good morning, soul mates. I hope that you all are having a lovely, restful yet rejuvenating holiday weekend. Welcome to summer! My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry. Poetry is much like the “summer” of language. It is slow and contemplative and full and sometimes heavy, meandering and inquisitive, full of background humming. On Sundays, I either write a poem or I share a poem, written by someone else, which has moved me. And also on Sundays, I implore you to write a poem, as well. Please feel safe and comfortable enough to share your poem in my Comments section. Today’s poem is a classic, popular poem by a poet named Marge Piercy. It speaks of the first days of summer.
MORE THAN ENOUGH by Marge Piercy
The first lily of June opens its red mouth. All over the sand road where we walk multiflora rose climbs trees cascading white or pink blossoms, simple, intense the scene drifting like colored mist.
The arrowhead is spreading its creamy clumps of flower and the blackberries are blooming in the thickets. Season of joy for the bee. The green will never again be so green, so purely and lushly
new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads into the wind. Rich fresh wine of June, we stagger into you smeared with pollen, overcome as the turtle laying her eggs in roadside sand.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
