Beginning Again: Creative Responses to Poetry of Presence

Untitled
A poet told me
to open my hands if I want to be held
and not seeking or searching for love it
arrived on a patch of paving
a Saturday afternoon on Main Street a conversation about
Rose Lemonade sipped
with sliced cucumber or
ripened berries
we smiled we
laughed we philosophized—
why leave a shelf empty in a shop? what use would that be?
Yet
what if that
space is
waiting
poised to
welcome in some
unknown thing—
some new thought or idea some being or delight or, like opening hands,
love?
Surprise
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Annie Pointer
Wymondham, Norfolk, U.K.
Inspired by “A Community of the Spirit” by Rumi (27).
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Colour
“I would love to live as a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding...”
—John O’Donahue, “Fluent”
My colour changing with
the tone of sky and tree—
the soft silver moon
on black water by night,
the gun metal shine on
rainy days as I snake and coil my way toward Source and sea- harbour salmon leaping against the Tide, glinting gold in
the sun and spume; pearling iridescent, the depths ...
so singing of blue.
What colour the shape of my day as it ‘ovals’ the week? What colour the music as
I roar in a flood
ochre awash with turbulent mud? What flavour of quarks
as they arrive in colours of three? —the voice of my song as the journey unfolds—
out of Times and Time And these earthy realms.
Nina Manston
Blewbury, Oxfordshire, England
Inspired by “Fluent” by John O' Donahue (82).
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Sieve
Like a forty-niner panning for gold, tiny holes in me
allow the sorrows
and woundings by the world to pass through, dripping, yet somehow hold moments of mystery
as precious nuggets caught.
Being breathed,
the air and life rush into my world; what does not serve me flows through with my permission.
The sieve swirls the living water, breath and life, happiness and heartbreak, and nothing needs
to be different
than it is.
Nan Kuhlman
Monrovia, California, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Sifter” by Naomi Shihab Nye (30).


Ordinary Miracles
after Wislawa Szymborska’s “Miracle Fair”
It's up to us to make miracles
out of the ordinary
to see through this world’s
legerdemain
the difference maple leaves make early each day when they
diamond cut the sun
how the hermit thrush's ethereal call
haunts
our woods every morning
and how smells of cold winter transform
into May's warm green aromatherapy
to become
all of miracles
we will ever need.
David Robert Clowers
Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Miracle Fair” by Wislawa Szymborska (98).
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Going into the Dark
Suppose you close
your eyes when walking down a gravel road
at night, just to see
how straight you can walk without looking.
You may be surprised
at how you can read
the road beneath your feet the packed gravel in the ruts the loose rocks at the edge. All the noise of the day
has quieted to the sound
of the stones
crunching beneath your feet as you feel and listen
for the path ahead.
Ruby Wilson
Bruce, South Dakota, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Sweet Darkness” by David Whyte (152) and “Entrance” by Rainer Maria Rilke,
as translated by Dana Gioia (162).
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The Generosity of Windows
Karen Gold
Toronto, Ontario, Canada artofthestoryblog.com
Inspired by “The Patience of Ordinary Things” by Pat Schneider (33).
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The Old Red Barn
My old red barn is still standing on the land where our folks would walk to work.
Our cows, pigs, chickens, horses and even kittens are taken care of with much love.
My grandfather milked the cows as my Dad and I also did.
In the Spring the rains came to make the clover grow so we could harvest it later for hay. Our old Oliver tractor worked harder than anyone as it went back and forth plowing the
fields getting it ready to plant.
My old red barn had some holes in the roof and needed some attention. Another job for Dad
and I.
The red was fading from the barn because of the weather. The work was never done.
The cows needed milking every night and morning: turn around and it begins again. Those
kittens sure liked the warm milk each morning and night.
Time has come for mowing the clover for the hay. Once the clover is down, the sun dries it.
Grandfather would make sure it was dried by checking it carefully each day, turning it over. It wouldn’t be long before it went into the mow.
The old red barn needs some cleaning out today and fresh straw spread to make a nice place for the cows to lay.
Time came for the little piglets to be born. We bedded their pens down and called the sows in from the pig lot for them. We waited and watched.
The Spring house cleaning is going strong. Mom got her young ones busy helping her to shine the silver and beating the rugs on the clothesline. It seems like we just finished the job of last year’s cleaning.
It was also time for planting the garden with the veggie seeds that would be canned in late fall for the winter months.
Dad called from the old red barn that the little pigs are coming. Can the young ones help in the barn instead of helping Mom in the house?
Need to repair some boards in the old horse stalls before the horses get out. I let them out on pasture so I can hammer nails without being bothered by their love.
A storm was brewing in the West, the sky is getting darker and the wind was picking up. Must get the animals into the barn before the storm.
The old red barn made it through the storm with very little damage. Need to fix the old barn door and some boards on the West side. And so life goes on for the family.
Thanking God for our home and the old red barn.
Carol Cole
Newton, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Inspired by “The Last Things I’ll Remember” by Joyce Sutphen (172).
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Then We Moved to a Farm
The old leaves, like love, died hard, still blanketed the winter’s bare
flower beds, their veins no longer pulsing with life yet still destined to
nurture the ground, next year’s blooms.
“the lies have to stop” she said.
I gasped, involuntary really, like my answer
“how’s this for truth, I was abused as a boy” words 40 years dormant, now a life of their own forced through the darkness in my mind, like spring flowers long struggling to break ground.
I sit on a bench, the sun a whisper on my face,
branches of pin oaks and red maples
shelter me
Louis Castelli
Galena, Ohio, U.S.A.
Inspired by “The Bare Arms of Trees” by John Tagliabue (78) and “Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,”
by Barbara Crooker (165).
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Silence
Once upon a time there was the silence
Hope was still a memory of future days ahead
The waters parted company in silence
And heaven kissed the earth so softly snuggled in her bed.
The quiet desert moon reflects the silence
Stories of the stars are heard in whispers over time Remember how we captured life in silence Drifting off to sleep to images and rhymes.
Talking is more often done in silence
The thoughts between the lines speak louder than our words Embarrassingly adolescent silence
Truth is left unspoken, trembling like a bird.
I recall in refuge I took silent
So I could hear the beating of my heart reveal my name
Where myth is woven peacefully in silence
Eyes meet eyes meet ancient eyes—come dance before the flame
G!d is resting comfortably in silence.
Patiently he waits for us—take comfort, let him in Beauty is revealed to us in silence
Returns us to the place where we can all renew again
In Silence Silence.
Silence.
Click to hear this song performed.
Rabbi Mark Novak
Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Jewishstorytelling.com
interfaithstorytelling.org
Inspired by “Now is the Time” by Hafiz (110).
________
 Among some Jews, another way to spell the name of the deity. It is regarded as a sign of respect to not write the deity’s name in full.
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predawn
caught in the clutches of my ancient ash
the pale moon
pauses to
reflect
Phyllis Beckman
Onalaska, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Getting Up Early” by Anne Porter (66).
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At the Edge
(Oil and cold wax medium on cradled board, 18”x18”)
Carol Beth Icard
Landrum, South Carolina, U.S.A. carolbethicard.com
Inspired by “Ancient Language” by Hannah Stephenson (29).


Traveling Light
I have learned to carry nothing on the beach
at sunrise.
The ever-vigilant gulls
see every bag
as full of bread. Screeching scavengers they circle and dive at any hapless fool.
I am learning to carry nothing to the beach
at sunrise.
No thoughts or cares,
swirling and turning, louder than gulls.
Now
empty handed
I walk at dawn, the birds at rest on silver-lit sand.
Rosemary Wright
Ocean Grove, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Thinking” by Danusha Laméris (47).
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Presence
First Peoples speak no should
no could
no would
that stress what is not.
Like their Grandfathers First Peoples walk
as they see
as they speak
what is.
Susan Taylor
Knox, Maine, U.S.A.
Inspired by the anthology title, Poetry of Presence.
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doors
inside outside
a door
either way
on the other side There are mysteries surprises
and
sometime horrors
We don't always know
Behind some old, battered doors Await
warmth and welcome
Behind some exquisite doors Are lessons
to separate us from
The Others
Doors are shields
or Barriers
Invitations or Rejections
Doors keep secrets
We didn't know until
we opened the door
that on the other side
lay light and air and
The Promise of Freedom
We didn't know until
we opened the door
Outside would be ICE
I locked my bedroom door and awoke to find it Unlocked
My second stepfather standing over me
I didn't mention it
I remembered first stepfather
I didn't know when my mother called me at a friend’s to say Go home
to pick up some things we need
that
I would open the door to find
a part of first stepfather's brain
on the floor
________
 Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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next to where he had been sleeping before my brother blew it out
How do you know
which door to choose?
Where is the prize
you dream will change your life? Door One!
Door Two!
Door Three!
Inspired by .
Davine Del Valle
New York, New York, U.S.A.
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“the door” by Miroslav Holub (139)


Bird or Stone
When a writing instructor asked if we are more bird
or stone, and then sent us outside to observe and write, I immediately thought,
I’m bird, of course. I love birds,
their colors, their songs and chatter. I assumed I’d see myself aloft, trusting the wild air.
Maybe I didn’t want to see myself as a dull rock, embedded
in the old ways of earth.
But what about the smooth
or intricately colored stones
I put in my pocket as a child,
or the glint of quartz, or the way mica winks at the sun? What about the graciousness of canyon walls?
Maybe everything is related
to everything else in some way. Maybe the real question is
how are we like bird and stone, ocean and desert, sun and rain? Sometimes even a crow
will have a stone in its mouth.
Linda Gelbrich
Corvallis, Oregon, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Sifter” by Naomi Shihab Nye (30).
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Unlock Obstacles
keeping tabs remembering lies holding onto faults becomes an awful heavy load to carry
attaching value prioritizing worth preferring one over others becomes a burden
of grief when loss arrives
claiming ownership expecting loyalty demanding trust become impossibilities blocking love’s arrival
open instead, the heart’s eyes allow entry for life’s
smallest gifts to be seen unlock obstacles
invite opportunity
Geri Ortega
Oakland, California, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Because even the word obstacle is an obstacle” by Alison Luterman (88).
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Oh She Is Not So Different From Us
Jeanie Bernard
Brevard, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Longing” by Julie Cadwallader Staub (63).
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Waiting for the Time
Gratefully reminiscent of Rainer Maria Rilke
I live my life in shadows of starlight. I live my life in the surge of tides. I live my life in cycles of sunshine. I search for a god without edges.
I join anthems sung by the spheres.
My treasures are filled with longing. Bells of my grandmother beckon.
A feather just fell from the sky.
An unfolded pine cone has freed its seed. I’ve waited for so many years.
In time I will gaze into my dreams, stand from the shadows,
and greet myself —without fear.
Edith “Edi Lenore” Powers Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Love After Love” by Derek Walcott (55).


Awesome Just As Is
During the inviting weekend of creative journaling
in this circle at St. Kate’s,
a welcome gift arrives—
my very own mantra
“be awesome just by being”—
a simple concoction
an enticing new morsel of seven syllables
to roll on my tongue.
I breathe in: “be awesome” breathe out: “just by being” and more slowly now
in small bites
“awesome” “being”
in out.
Fellow journalers love it,
rate the newborn mantra recipe five-star.
My accelerating mind shouts inside my head: wouldn’t this be great on bumper stickers?
or as an alluring illustrated saying
on frameable glossy posters, or maybe coffee mugs? Overflowing with pride and delighted taste buds, my busy brain spins ahead, away,
sees more savoring opportunities yet to come.
Whoa easy now breathe
back into this meditation in out remember “be awesome
just by being”—
being
here now as is
not somehow otherwise not somewhere else
not sometime later.
Just enough
little mantra.
Be.
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Ann M. Penton
Green Valley, Arizona, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Smart Cookie” by Richard Schiffman (199).
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More Beautiful Than New
after Alice Walker's “I Will Keep Broken Things”
When you sobbed into my arms, recalling my name, and I cried with you, the years of our lives only made more exquisite our childhood play, our make-believe houses in the alders, apples, chicken houses and barn ells where we grew so real
we could have visited one another right then, old, just as if we'd just stepped out
of our childhood kitchens sipping imaginary coffee or tea, proud of our house making, practicing for the “some day” of homes of our own with good china and chairs, if modest, none of us pretentious. How could we have known such love lay ahead, such good mates, sweet daughters and sons? How we magically made such dreams to live in, true, didn't we?
If you should wish for company some day, some girl who knew you when, who dreamed big dreams like you and brought some of them about, come by, I will serve you valley tea of clover blossoms and berry leaves steeped with violet-lemon syrup in pots and cups cracked and well-worn and on cloths scrubbed, mended and saved for the use left
in them. There might be a rust-touched dipper of rainwater by the steps and a chipped enamel colander of wild apples on the porch, a dented pan of peelings for the hens,
from the pie I'd dish up. I know you would feel at home.
And when we drop, the way your Herbie has, and return to the ground
by the ponds with family and friends gone on, may we be all the more precious as they are, done. Until then, here's this broken “Sweet Pea” teacup from my china cupboard I couldn't bring myself to throw away. Bought for my father for his love of these blooms he planted
every year every valley he'd ever lived. And for his mother's Scottish line and love of tea.
How could I not try to fix it after its crash? You know he'd have brought you out a fistful
from his garden where we met on the road in sorrow that morning you came by with your girl, tears in your eyes like his for his friends.
I've done my best to fit it back together, for our kind of house or any other mansion to come, to no avail. Imagine it taken reverently in hand by a master in Kintsugi, bowed to, its shards rejoined with a stream of gold like the brook we played along summers and winters. A gleaming map of our time alive, thought more wondrous for the evidence of its repair. Its meandering golden design. But it's out of my hands and I have no dust
of any karats for mixing with glue.
Instead, I call on Alice Walker, who'd have been our kind of fabulous brown playmate, and her poem picturing a shelf of honor she keeps for treasures whose beauty
is in not being fixed. Though I tend a barn-black peat patch of used objects I can't bear to toss as if discarding parts of my life as useless, thinking of them as sculptures naturally made, begun with the rust-laced pail Mama used for diapers and I found in the woods in Enfield where I was new-born. Then these shards of white H. Burgess, Burslem iron-stone china marked with its royal arms of lion, crown, and unicorn, knowing, now, why I couldn't let
this shattered pitcher go to the transfer station, deserving a homestead dump for discovering with delight, time to come, burst by late ice on the porch. Even purchased for its broken
lily and swanlike shape spied discarded under that roadside sale table upriver. Exactly
what we furnished our playhouses with though I wasn't thinking that, then, when I brought it home, subconscious propensity that it was. I would turn its chipped rim to the back and trick the crack with a plastic bag of water for flowers. How much my grown-up house is like our playhouses in the trees, especially that leaning apple, its branched roof between our pastures and the old school on the valley's floor.
Now, for all these reasons and because it is beyond me, into my garden
of beautiful broken things goes this “Sweet Pea” cup I'll think of as ours from now on because
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we 've met on the sweet map of our strong childhoods again after your Herbie fell and we cried together for how our make-believes back there came true, giving us our dreamed of men,
right here where we dreamed them. And, broken from the mill, more admirable still.
Patricia Smith Ranzoni
Poet Laureate of Maine
Bucksport, Maine, U.S.A.
Inspired by “I Will Keep Broken Things” by Alice Walker (146).
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Untitled
What is it
surging green through a wintered earth, breathing a palette of pastels into bare branches clothed in color?
Buds become
other than themselves
or are they more
fully themselves
opening from within,
allowing transformation?
What is it
touching young leaves and me with one breeze,
moving white billowing clouds across an ocean of sky
without a word?
In the silent resurgence
we recognize
life eternal
keeping its promise.
Pat Noll
Wallingford, Vermont, U.S.A.
Inspired by “St. Francis and the Sow” by Galway Kinnell (96).
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Release
Talk the words back into the trees—
release them
to rise on sunlight
and fall like ribbons of rain—
to re-enter the leaves
to comfort the ground—
to let them all go.
Catherine Senne Wallace
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.
Inspired by “The Quiet Listeners” by Laura Foley (48).
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A sunset, lightly held
Lucy Griffith
Comfort, Texas, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Sifter” by Naomi Shihab Nye (30).
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Rage’s Rainbow
It begins even before the beginning,
In our sometimes blind and indifferent eyes. Its’ seed is in the earliest unmet wanting, In the anger of unanswered cries.
It germinates as we learn to play, Bounded by the Rules of Nice.
“You can't hit your sister,” you hear each day. Repressed, its roots deepen; thrice.
We grow up within ‘happy’ confines, Of always getting along.
Only acceptable expressions accepted, But to be heard, all our hearts long.
The strength of our character, How well we were brought up. These create the container, That we build to bottle up.
The lucky ones are weak.
Their character is flawed.
If the container has one leak, The anger gets out; Thank God.
Why does tragedy stalk the Strong? Why heros are hyped,
And villains are wrong?
Are heros really that strong?
I wished I was weak.
My container held for too long. I, did not leak.
Who knew that emotion’s colors contained, Could condense into blackness and depression? That repressed rage sustained,
Could coil into suicidal obsession?
Addiction, depression, moderation, elation.
These are not opposites,
But facets of a universal prism,
Forever bending reality into humanity’s emotional rainbow.
It takes a tragedy,
Or a great love lost. Many seasons of rough weather.


An immense emotional cost.
Thank God for broken hearts and weak character! If not for these, we might never know,
That we hide a priceless prism inside,
Or the colors of our own soul.
Shawn Enterline
Colchester, Vermont, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Afterwards” by William Stafford (64).
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I Wasn’t a Poet
I wasn’t a poet until
my loneliness cracked open
my coconut heart
a sharp blade sliced out words the chewy meat of struggle the milk of compassion
I wasn’t a poet until
my paint brush hardened with no color shining my dance stopped, wound down to stillness desire flamed still, and I wanted to tell you,
yes, you, that I am still here
even though you cannot hear my music.
I wasn’t a poet until
desperation split open the dictionary of my body words marched upon paper
like an army setting up camp
in orderly rows
cooking and waving flags,
tending their wounded.
I wasn’t a poet until
you, yes you, told me that these offerings were more than hopelessness,
more than tears,
more than just my own lonely prayers but human communication
between aliens.
I am not really a poet.
I am just pen, paper, a ridiculous notion
that this emptiness can be filled by a persimmon pear tree and dusty back roads
and African children with mirror black eyes.
If we are all truly connected
by inter-molecular strings of light
then, like harpsichord music vibrating our cells, our mitochondrial efforts are all one.
Be a poet.
Tell of your silent singing
let your blood, like ink,
speak of the liquid center we all contain.
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Carol Hechtenthal
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Inspired by “How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry (103).
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Can She Still Hear?
(For Rose)
1.
The room of three beds is empty
except for Rose who the nurse says,
“Is declining, terminal.” She lies
on her side, white hair messed, eyebrows pinched, sometimes opens an eye. Her teeth
are out, mouth sunken, so thin
her 5’11” frame is fading.
Her nephew arrives, friends
from her “Temple family,” as she calls us,
one after another, after another
talk to her, tell her they
love her, give her a kiss.
They say, she can still hear even though all else
has vanished.
2.
Shabbat, and Rose is resting— sleeping or in a coma,
mouth wide open, sans teeth.
I lean over to read a loving message from far away friends. I stand
for a moment then flee
carrying sadness and horror
to a nearby park,
look at the flat lake
with swans gliding,
a couple kissing by the bridge,
a mother pushing a child
on the swings. I ask myself, “Couldn’t I at least stay
and hold her hand?”
Adam Fisher
Port Jefferson Station, New York, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Bedside Manners” by Christopher Wiseman (187).
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Skeptic’s Reincarnation
Cut up a tree’s skeleton Burn in a wood stove Bury cold ashes
To become a tree again.
Roy Woolfstead
Redding, California, U.S.A.
Inspired by “Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain” by Li Po (122).
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After Reading “What’s in the Temple” by Tom Barrett, I Consider His Question
In the secret temple of my heart was an altar with nothing on it— I love nothing, the pure potential of it. Sometimes when others journeyed here, I sensed
they were surprised,
perhaps even sorry for me,
as if it would be better
with a lotus or a cross
or a star or a figurine
or a photo of someone.
Or a stone. Always something.
I tried, in fact, to put things
on the altar, but no thing let itself
stay. There was a day
when, in a single moment,
the altar had everything
on it, and by everything,
I mean everything—every
bee, every stick, every
plastic bag and beetle,
every crushed empty can,
every crumpled shirt,
every door handle, compass,
broken thermometer, apple,
trashcan, tree, everything.
And it was so beautiful I wept.
For hours. Oh, the pure potential of it! And then, that altar
was no longer in some secret
temple in my heart,
but everywhere. Everywhere
a place to worship. Everything a prayer waiting to be heard, to be touched. And inside, the most beautiful nothing, not even an altar,
which is, oddly, everything.
I can’t say how.
Sometimes, when I am quiet enough,
I notice it. Sometimes, when
I get out of the way, I fall all the way in.
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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Placerville, Colorado, U.S.A.
wordwoman.com
ahundredfallingveils.com
Inspired by “What’s in the Temple” by Tom Barrett (70).
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Maternal Watch
High Island, Texas, April, 2018
William (Mel) Taylor Houston, Texas, U.S.A. Inspired by the anthology’s cover.


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From the Editors
A hearty thanks to all of you who generously shared your work in celebration of Poetry of Presence and National Poetry Month 2018. Compiling Beginning Again was a joy for us. Your beautiful writings, songs, photographs and pieces of art warmed our hearts, as did the stories you shared about how the anthology has sparked insight and transformation in your lives. Like countless other readers who have taken the time to write us since the book’s release, you have reinforced our belief that mindfulness poetry can help change the world. We’re grateful.
Now you have reached the end of this collection. But of course, it isn’t the end. Please share Beginning Again with loved ones and friends, just as you have shared the anthology. Use it as a springboard for new imaginative work. Let it plant seeds of hope and compassion. Let it be the start of something new. As we like to say, “The end of the poem is just the beginning.”
Have a question about Poetry of Presence or Beginning Again? Have some feedback to offer? We’d love to hear from you. Connect with us:
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