Happy International Women’s Day! Not so happy Daylight Savings Spring Forward Day. Where does the time go?
Sunday is devoted to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. Thank you. Thank you for coming to commune at the blog, and to read, and to contemplate, and to rest, and to support. Thank you to those of you who have bravely shared your poems in the past. Please keep sharing. This is friendly, safe format – an online poetry workshop, to send our heart waves out in the form of words and of phrases and of nuances. Here is my poetry offering for today:
Spring Cleaning
Grumbling, hesitant, resigned.
Annoyed with the prospect of the task at hand.
Necessary evil, spring clean up, in the yard.
Mellowing, energy flowing, smiling.
Slowly opening to commune with nature.
Family venture, another tie that binds us.
Laughing, singing, glowing.
In love with creation, ours and His.
Everything breathes. Everything makes perfect sense.
We’re done? The project, completed too soon.
I wanted to bottle the moment up,
and to hold it in my hands,
so that I could keep the inseparableness of it all, forever.
Fortune for the day – “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard
Welcome to Sunday. May this first Sunday in March, be particularly calming, soothing, comforting, and re-setting. May this Sunday find you surrounded in such peaceful tranquility that you can’t imagine ever coming out of its trance of repose. Remember, when you make/allow/find yourself feeling good, you, in turn, uplift the entire world.
Readers, Sundays are dedicated to poetry here at Adulting – Second Half. I strongly encourage you to share your beautiful souls in the form of poems in the Comments Section. My new friend and fellow writer, Walberto Campos, has written a strong, poignant poem about his father’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease. I will be publishing that one in the Comments section. Please read it, and please, too, publish your poems in the Comments section. The world can never have enough poetry. Your poems give others permission to share their souls, as well. In poetry, our souls are bared and veiled, all at the same time, which is why I think that we all find poetry so mystifying, yet gratifying. It is so easy to find our own experiences and emotions in almost any poem. Poems are powerful. Here’s my poem for today:
My Little Flower
My little flower grows in someone else’s garden.
Yet, perhaps by providence,
by a Source who loves us both,
I have been assigned to some of her care.
(and perhaps she has been entrusted with some of my care, too)
She is tiny and fragile, yet beautiful and radiant.
She keeps her glowing, purple bloom, reaching towards the sun,
Always. She chooses the sunny side. Always.
Always moving towards the sunshine.
On my designated day, I help to nourish her growth,
hopefully adding some woven strands to her tender roots,
her roots which have already kept her very strong,
through some rough winds and fearful storms.
She has good, solid roots because they fearlessly branch out,
to get her what she needs, to flourish and to blossom.
Every part of her being is fearlessly alive, and flowing, and growing.
She knows how to bloom, my little flower.
She inspires me. And so after carefully tending to her,
I go back to my own garden and everything blossoms,
all the more radiantly, all because of one tiny flower.
Fortune for the Day – “If you judge people, you have no time to lovethem.” – Mother Teresa
Good morning, my dear friends and readers. I hope that you are well today. New readers, Sundays are dedicated to poetry here at Adulting-Second Half. Please share your poems in the Comments. Soul Sunday, has quickly become my most popular, “read” day on the blog. That tells me that poetry moves many souls, in many ways. Share your poems, friends. When you share your poems, I think that you share your most intimate, less “crafted” self. And that is the greatest gift that you can give to yourself and to the world.
Here is my poem for the day:
Cleaning Out the Garage
There’s a heap of our family life,
Unceremoniously dumped on the curb of the drive.
A litany of sports played by the kids,
starting with small plastic bats, moving on to helmets.
Helmets for everything – bike riding, lacrosse, softball.
Old suitcases, cracked and weathered with age and wear,
But once the housers of our treasures and trinkets as they witnessed,
The grand adventures of our chaotic family vacations.
The suitcases are piled on top of the piles and piles and piles of rags.
Rags, that once started out as the nice, fresh, new towels,
Only to brought out for guests, but after years of use,
Relegated to the rag pile in the garage, best used to wipe down cars.
No one has taken the electric scooter yet,
The in-line skates are past their prime.
The bike baskets are charming, but faded and crumbly.
It takes a great deal of fortitude to clean out the garage.
Most especially, emotional fortitude.
A small piece of my heart is faintly beating,
Underneath the heap of our family life, lying by the road.
Fortune for the day -“They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them.” – Bhagavad Gita
Good, beautiful Sunday morning. It’s a lovely day here. The sun is shining, the lake is still, the air is calm. It’s like the day is quietly, patiently inviting us to become part of it. Sundays are soulful here at Adulting – Second Half. Sundays are our poetry workshop days. I share a poem and I ask you to share some of your poems in the Comments section. A few of my braver readers have shared such gorgeous poems in the past. Please share yours, too. In the words of Peter McWilliams:
One of the great joys of life is creativity. Information goes in, get shuffled about, and comes out in new and interesting ways. . . . It doesn’t matter that you don’t know how to do it “perfectly.” . . . Does it give you joy? Does it give you satisfaction? Is it fun? Does it make you feel more in touch with the creative flow of life? . . . . Then do it.
Here’s my poem for today:
The Lake
The lake is like watching a reflection of my emotions,
Sometimes so quietly still, almost to the point of solid nothingness,
Sometimes so turbulent, I dare not venture too far in,
Sometimes a surprising disturbance, the unexpected jumps out,
Creating ripples, not in great haste, to disappear.
The lake appears so very deep, yet it has its shallows.
The lake houses a lot of life in its teeming depths,
It’s not nearly as placid as it seems, underneath it all.
Whether tranquil or churned up, the lake is truly beautiful.
Fortune for the day -“One who seeks knowledge must desire from a young age to hear the entire truth.” – Plato
Sundays are poetry workshop days, here at Adulting – Second Half. I hope that you are sitting comfortably, maybe even cozily wrapped in a blanket. I hope that you have a delicious, warm cup of tea or coffee, readily available, in order to warm your hands, and your heart. I hope that, in this very moment, you feel surrounded by peace, comfort, acceptance and love. I hope that, right now, in this very place in time, you are in your sacred space.
Here is my poem for today, and as always, please feel the courage, the inclination, the vulnerability and the inspiration, to share your own poems in the Comments section. One day, I hope that this poetry workshop of ours, is “Standing Room Only.” It’s our creative impulses, that come out from within the deepest part of ourselves (without demeaning censure coming from ourselves or from others), that drive this world forward – a beautiful world, which we are all co-creating together. Be free. Be open. Be real. Be alive. Don’t waste another second, in a precious day of your life on anything less than your purest, kindest authenticity. You, and our world, will be uplifted for your effort, and yet also the effortlessness it takes for you to be, your purest, truest self.
Melange
If my things were to represent my mind,
My mind would be chaotic, and in disarray.
Jumping from lucky symbols, to memories captured in the form of photographs,
Piles of inspirations, and numbered orderly logs, laid out in disorderly fashion.
Objects that touched my heart, at the very instance that I laid eyes on the piece,
For no particular rhyme or reason, perhaps just deeply primal.
The compilation of it all, makes no sense to the untrained eye.
But to me, it is a beautiful, nonsensical pattern,
A medley, an assortment, that makes perfect sense.
Fortune for the Day – “Joy and sorrow are the shade and light of life; without light and shade no picture is clear.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan
Readers, Sundays aren’t just for football. (But hey, Happy Super Bowl Sunday!) Here at Adulting- Second Half, Sundays are reserved for the poetic side of ourselves. Every Sunday, I share a poem and I ask you to share your poems in the Comments. It’s a nice way to dive into the heart a little bit, before the often analytical work week begins.
Fortune for the Day – “To change one’s life: do it flamboyantly. Startimmediately. No exceptions.” – William James
Sundays are poetry workshop days here at Adulting Second Half. On Sundays I share a poem and I fully encourage you to share your poetry in the Comments section. It’s fun to play with words!! Please give it a try. I moderate all comments and I would never allow negativity in this sacred space, where we share what is on our hearts and minds – openly, freely, authentically. Here’s my poem for today:
invecchiamento
Sometimes I accept the inevitable,
I let it flow,
I’m at peace with it.
Sometimes the frustration builds,
And I try to dam it all up,
Trying to defy the laws of nature
And gravity.
Sometimes I laugh at my acts of futility.
Sometimes I marvel at them.
Sometimes I play the comparison game.
Who of us is doing it better? And in what way?
And does it matter? And do we really have a say?
Sometimes I stop paying attention to the things which I cannot change.
Fortune for the day – “When anger spreads through the breast, guard thytongue from barking loudly.” – Sapho
Anger does start in the chest, doesn’t it? And it has a burning feel to it, that does spread like fire and even sometimes like an inferno. What are you feeling right now? What does that feeling feel like, in each part of your body? Notice it. Stay with it. Describe it. Feel it. Let it go.
New friends, Sundays are our Poetry Workshop days. I share a poem and I feel a longing to have more of my readers share their poems in the Comments section. (Longing is a hollow feeling deep in my core, I’ve noticed) Anyway, it’s safe here. Even if you don’t feel like sharing, write a poem just for yourself today. You’ll find it freeing. You’ll be able to express more than you ever could with regular prose. I promise. Here’s my poem for today:
Our own little poetry workshop. Our safe space to toy with the words. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Today, mine came out to be a little more “prose style” . . . .
Chris
I just woke up and Chris is right here.
It’s just that there’s always Chris . . .
Chris is . . . . well, Chris is A LOT . . . .
When Chris comes, everything just seems to revolve around Chris.
“How does this relate to Chris? How does this honor Chris?”
Living your normal life when Chris is around, is almost impossible.
Chris always brings so much drama to everywhere and everyone. Chris is just one who brings out the best and yet also the worst, in everybody.
Chris seems to always bring that BIG load of baggage, every year. Every single year. And it seems, that every year, Chris just stays longer and longer and longer, always extending the stay. Chris is an expensive, messy, emotional, time consuming, exhausting house guest. Chris really should be named Great Expectations. Chris is the “Original GE.” OGE. That’s Chris, for ya.
Yet, everyone loves Chris! Everyone gets so excited for Chris to come every year! Everyone counts down, for the reliable arrival of Chris. And the truth is, I’m right there with them.
Chris is fun! Chris is colorful! Chris is generous! Always full of gifts and surprises! Chris has a way of making life feel just so much more rich and decadent and bright and hopeful! How can you not love Chris? Chris is just so amazing at connecting everyone and reminding everyone of their deepest bonds and fondest memories and greatest hopes and kindest selves. That’s just Chris’ way. And it is special to Chris. Truly, uniquely, special. Chris brings depth to life, in the ways that no one else can.
Maybe we are unfair to Chris. Maybe Chris just wants to be Chris. Chris doesn’t want to let anybody down. Chris just wants to be loved, just like the rest of us. Everybody loves Chris. Everybody hates Chris. But have we really taken time to figure out our own special relationship with Chris? Do we know what Chris means to us? Maybe Chris is different than our projections, or the many movies and books made about Chris, or even different than whatever anybody has told us about Chris or what theythink that we should think about Chris. Maybe this year, I’ll spend some private time, some quiet time, just being with Chris, just observing Chris, just letting Chris show me the hidden depths and meaning of our own personal relationship with each other.
Chris is here to stay for a while, like it or not.
I love Chris. I truly do. Sometimes, I hate Chris. In the end, though, I know that there are reasons why Chris is in my life.
I think that I’ll really explore those reasons, this year.
Why not? Oh, wow, here’s Chris now.
I just woke up and Chris is right here.
“Hi Chris, what have you got planned for us today?”
I’m trying to put a definition on something that has never been.
I am trying to fit the new
into old, worn out, torn boxes.
How do you live outside of a long experienced paradigm
Completely?
Elon Musk and his triangle truck
Inspiration.
Readers, I have decided to turn Sundays into “Sunday Soul” and to play around with poetry on my Sunday posts. It feels strange to me because it is not something I have spent a lot of time doing. Trying to write poetry, when you never really have, is kind of like going to your first pottery or painting classes. I don’t have my footing. I don’t really know what I am doing, but I am enjoying the experience. It feels lonely up here in the blogspot. I sure wish you guys would play around with some poetry in the Comments section. It can be our own neat little virtual coffee house poetry reading, every Sunday.
So, I hope you don’t mind the format change. Unless I have something truly pressing on my mind that must come out in prose form, Sundays here are Adulting – Second Half are dedicated to poetry. I hope the rest of your day flows rhythmically, and softly, peacefully and profoundly and poetically . . . . .
