#255: Words and Wishes
Hello,
I’m looking forward to this year ending. To restart. To pick up the pieces. I found the most beautiful set of wishes for the new year, penned down by Soumya John at the start of 2023.
I’m going to clutch onto Soumya’s words for 2024. May there be peace and light.
Poetry Corner
Some poems that resonated + this pensive painting by Laurits Andersen Ring.
1. Right Here by Dane Anthony
Stop moving. Stand in
one place – this place.
Breathe slowly; in, then out. Repeat.
Repeat again. Let your
shoulders sink and relax. Unclench
your jaw; slowly close your eyes.
Listen for your heartbeat; really
listen. Feel it pulse in
your fingertips.
Lessen expectations. Under-do all your
efforts. Requisition the time
for your soul
to catch up. Lean
into the wind; feel it
like a tree and test the ground.
Learn to trust the resilience.
It would be treason to move
quickly ~ left or right ~
from this place. It is alright to be exactly
what you are, who you are, where you are.
Right here, right now.
2. Morning Meditation by Rainer Maria Rilke
Have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
Do not search for the answers, which
could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live your way
into the answer.
3. It’s Sunday Morning in Early November by Philip Schultz
and there are a lot of leaves already.
I could rake and get a head start.
The boy’s summer toys need to be put
in the basement. I could clean it out
or fix the broken storm window.
When Eli gets home from Sunday school,
I could take him fishing. I don’t fish
but I could learn to. I could show him
how much fun it is. We don’t do as much
as we used to do. And my wife, there’s
so much I haven’t told her lately,
about how quickly my soul is aging,
how it feels like a basement I keep filling
with everything I’m tired of surviving.
I could take a walk with my wife and try
to explain the ghosts I can’t stop speaking to.
Or I could read all those books piling up
about the beginning of the end of understanding…
Meanwhile, it’s such a beautiful morning,
the changing colors, the hypnotic light.
I could sit by the window watching the leaves,
which seem to know exactly how to fall
from one moment to the next. Or I could lose
everything and have to begin over again.
4. How Poems are Made/A Discredited View by Alice Walker
Letting go
In order to hold one
I gradually understand
How poems are made.
There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
Of the too full cup
And runs and hides
Its too full self
In shame.
I gradually comprehend
How poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
Heart.
I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
That season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
That crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.
There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.
+ Rejection letters are being turned into poems.
-Caro
-I wrote one too :)
Recommended Listening
Aaxa, Songs of Hope is a project by Studio Nilima where poems of longing, pain, regret, and hope by incarcerated individuals in Assam have been reimagined as songs. Such a beautiful collaboration.
No links this week.
Just keeping my head down and trying to consume less, make more.
Stay true to yourselves,
Rohini
I love the rejection letter poems....they all made me laugh which I haven't done in some time. Great therapy. Since I rarely get responses and/or rejection letters these days, I can't try it myself. Please post more when you get a chance.
A wonderful morning read... thank you!