by Kat | Apr 3, 2025 | General, Poetry
Welcome to National Poetry Month!
And once again, I am joining with Kym, Bonny, Sarah, and sending a huge welcome to Vera who is joining us this year! We will all be sharing some poetry on Thursday’s this month!
This week our focus is on poems that bring hope (because we all could use an extra ration of hope these day, right?)
My choice to share today comes from a Pennsylvanian poet, Barbara Crooker. Lots of her poems are filled with hope, but the one I have chosen is Promise. It was especially meaning for me this week as those first little dandelions began to bloom in my backyard!
Promise
by Barbara Crooker
This day is an open road
stretching out before you.
Roll down the windows.
Step into your life, as if it were a fast car.
Even in industrial parks,
trees are covered with white blossoms,
festive as brides, and the air is soft
as a well-washed shirt on your arms.
The grass has turned implausibly green.
Tomorrow, the world will begin again,
another fresh start. The blue sky stretches,
shakes out its tent of light. Even dandelions glitter
in the lawn, a handful of golden change.
Promise © 2005 Barbara Crooker.
You can read more about Barbara here on her website.
Make sure you visit Bonny today to find a bit more hope for your day!
And that is it for me this week! I will be back on Monday!
Header photo by photokip.com
by Kat | Mar 20, 2025 | General, Poetry
I don’t know about you all, but these days poetry is the lifeline that is keeping me sane. As the tsunami grows larger, I read more poetry. I don’t want to imagine what my life would be like if there was no poetry… thankfully, that will never be a reality because poets have me more than covered.
Recently, I heard a poem by Ilya Kaminsky ** Ilya is a “fairly new to me poet” and I have not been able to get that poem out of my head. It is eerily timely… despite being published in 2019. I am doubly fortunate that my library has a copy of Deaf Republic… I have been reading through it a few poems at a time each afternoon.
The opening poem, We Lived Happily during the War, sets the stage for the poems that follow. Poems that tell the story of Sonya and Alfonso and the town they live in. It is about community. It is about inclusion. (Ilya lost his hearing at age 4 and the book has some ASL images that allow the reader to be totally immersed in Ilya’s “world”) And, perhaps most importantly, it is about a view of things that are not at all familiar… at least to me… and that is exactly why reading poetry, especially right now, is so vital to me!
Here is Ilya’s poem:
We Lived Happily during the War
by Ilya Kaminsky
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house—
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
We Lived Happily during the War © 2019 Ilya Kaminsky. Published by Grey Wolf Press.
You can learn more about Ilya here and visit his website here.
Finally, stop and see who has gathered a poem to share with Bonny today!
** Yes, I listened to the Poetry Unbound episode when it aired, but back then this poem did not even make a blip on my radar. I am so glad Padraig revisited it in his Substack a couple of weeks ago!
Header photo by Polina Tankilevitch
by Kat | Feb 20, 2025 | General, Poetry
Confession time… I completely forgot today is the Third Thursday, so I have hastily gathered a poem to share with you all today.
Really, it’s a poem for me especially because I sure as hell could use a bit more kindness in my days. And of course, a poet must have had the same struggles… but they made sense of what I am missing. I am grateful to Danusha Laméris for gathering a small dose of kindness I can consume with my cup of coffee.
Thank you, Bonny for kindly gathering us all together this month. Stop by and inject your day with a slice of poetry!
Small Kindnesses
Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers will say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these b brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
Small Kindnesses from Bonfire Opera. Copyright © 2020 by Danusha Laméris.
Happy Thursday, everyone. Stay warm and I will see you all back here on Monday!
Header photo by Jason Villanueva
by Kat | Dec 19, 2024 | General, Poetry
Today, I am joining Bonny and friends today to share a bit of poetry. I *usually* read a couple of poems each morning, but a certain small someone has drastically altered my morning routine and I fell away from sitting with the quiet and reading a poem either with my eyes… or out loud to myself. I like to read poetry out loud very much. The poem I am sharing today is one of those poems that begs to be read aloud.
Thanks to Kym, this month I have been really focused on the kinship we all share in this corner of the internet… and more broadly – finding kinship in a very fractured world. This poem gives us a great starting point…
About Standing (in Kinship)
Kimberly M. Blaeser
We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.
Maybe we should give more honor to feet
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.
About Standing (in Kinship). Copyright © 2021 by Kimberly M. Blaeser. First published in Poetry. Reprinted in Poetry of Presence II More Mindfulness Poems.
You can read more about Kimberly M. Blaeser here and here on her website.
Make sure you stop and visit Bonny and see who she has gathered up today!
See you all back here on Monday!
Now a tiny postscript for all you Ted Kooser fans out there (as well as those of you who don’t know you are a Kooser fan yet!) I listened to this episode of Poetry For All and… yes, it brought tears to my eyes. I have listened to it again several times since as well… it is just so good!
“In this episode, we offer close readings of poems from Ted Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison. Kooser’s poems allow us to think about the poem as a social act, as a form of healing, and as a kind of meditation.”
I also requested Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison from my library… I will be picking it up later today. I wanted to share with you all because I thought you too might need a bit of healing and meditation as the New Year rapidly approaches.
by Kat | Nov 21, 2024 | General, Poetry
I contemplated skipping the poetry today… because, I completely forgot about it. But I pulled out the poetry book I am reading this year (although, I have not read a lick of poetry from it since you know who arrived!) and serendipitously, it fell open to the poem I am sharing today.
A few more moments spent searching on Pexels for a photo that will work and before I knew it, the post was ready to share!
The poem is so very fitting for my life right now and I hope you enjoy it as well.
Clearing
Martha Postlethwaite
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world,
so worthy of rescue.
Martha Postlethwaite, “Clearing.” Copyright © 2007 by Martha Postlethwaite. First published in The World of Prayer: Activists and Humanitarians Share Their Favorite Prayers (Orbis Books, 2012).
There is little about Ms. Postlethwaite on the interwebs and she has just a single book listed on Goodreads. I am ever so glad that this poem was included in Poetry of Presence II.
If you need more poetry in your life today, stop by and see who has gathered with Bonny today.
See you all back here on Monday with my word update!
Header photo by cottonbro studio
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