the art of taking note
This past June, my daughter and I took a trip 1200 miles or so on a yellow school bus. Actually there were two. Yellow buses.
We flew from South Carolina to New York and journeyed home as part of a team.
A wonderful videographer and artist named Nathan Lee produced this beautiful film on our adventure.
Now you can travel for a few moments along with us.
{I am currently working on a reflective poetry piece on our journey. Look forward to sharing it with you soon. Enjoy….}
When Hurt and Pain and Death play hopscotch on your very life road,
The heart circles all pumping blood flow back to the vital. To the very critical need.
The life blood, crimson seeks to triage the need and it deems it is the need to see the simple.
Simply see the joy in the simplest. Of gifts, of life.
To circle back and gather round, all the heart beats round the life givers. Life enhancers.
A word, The Word, bread, The bread. Feasting on the written, feasting on the life bread. Feasting on His gifts.
A Feast is pumpkin bread grilled cheese, say grace around the simple. Feasting senses on the just enough. Not more. Satisfied by simple.
All bells and whistles, accoutrement and clutter cast off for the bare boned simple.
Allowing simple to sing her song of lovely, sing her song of living. She leads us to her simple stream, a trickle flow enough.
Return of beet red male bird at the feeder, he who fights with self on glass. He beautiful. He a one man performance teetering eating seed. Act One, a simple show on window.
Art, the paint. Art, the song. Art, the page. Art, the wiper of the dusty dirty off the soiled soul places. Art, the interchange of actors in the play of living.
Art, life’s extravagant simple embellishment. Art, worship. Art, creative man gifts back to Creator God. Simply seeing art in all.
And love in all its four greek meaning forms, the greatest though of these simply love.
He serves in small trips to the market, long trips eight hours round trip to provide for us.She speaks simple I love you. He calls, he smiles, he thanks.
All wrapped up in beautiful family love. Love, simple poetry.
And simple takes the chalk out of the hand of that hopscotch threesome on the life-road,
Writes instead we love here, love lives here, cursive on the black asphalt.
So all who drive, see simply, love.
See simple living, savoring of the gifts. Breathing deep the fullness, hope-filled breathes.
Simple signs her name on the last line of the day, it is beautiful, isimply beautiful.
An alleluia chorus on an amen day.
This is Day 11. I am joining 31 Dayers at The Nester’s place for this series.
And I am linking with Michelle.
Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
Robert Frost
Dance – Movement of the Heart
Elizabeth W. Marshall
If only all would dance. Simply, a little more.
As shadows, sun’s rays, and white foam waves,
Their rhythmic breaking in and on the shore.
What a gentle teacher ocean is.
Of how to find your rhythm, how to learn to dance.
Water, foam and wave thrust on shelly sand.
The dance of wave on wave, eyes Beauty from the shore.
And we think far too often to save it for the feasts.
For man to do a pas de deux when woman dresses up for out.
But what of the dance of the everyday, the simple celebrations.
Of life and living, joy in the daily, movement becomes art.
And what of running fingers down the page, and letting words join in.
The dance of wordplay, phrase finds rhythm on the page,
Partners up with thought and steps from line to line, a dance.
What if words would partner with the heart, to do a dance of lyrical along
The lines of prose, does it become poetic and more a jig with steps more
Light and gay, where space is left so eyes can linger, breathing soft and slow.
Creates a space for eyes and hearts to partner up with mind, and waltz and
Sway, no need to rush, the pace is slow, the soul can take her time.
The pace of living can slow and savor, seeking steps which linger,
Long and longer, sweet and merry, hurry left behind.
And do we long to dance, because so early on we did, swayed and rocked as babies
The motion taught so young, to drift and sway and rock and sing, why leave that
Back in childhood. Can’t every movement restore Dance, isn’t life worth dancing truly?
Find steps light and graceful, feasting on the now, with song, and grateful pairing up
As happy partners, loving life and dancing in the moment.
Learning from trees their limbs sway, the tails of dog, like metronome have rhythm.
If only all would simply dance, a little more when living.
(Thank you for joining me on this 31 Days – A Series of Words. This is the Part 5 in the series. Other posts have included Ordinary, Savor, Hope, and The Poetic if you would like to back travel and read. Grateful to have you journeying with this pilgrim.) Note, in crediting Robert Frost’s quote on dance and my subsequent piece, I have placed my name beside my writing. Please know this is for clarification simply and that I highly esteem Robert Frost’s work and feel humbled to even be on the same page. This was to give credit, no form of comparison. Please note this, and extend grace for any wrong association or comparison which was never intended. Thanks, for grace. –Elizabeth.
A Plea For The Case Of Poetry
She steps into a world of books, there may be millions there.
Passes under the bold B and the bold N.
The smell of coffee hangs heavy in the air. Pungent dark soil acid rich. Trademark of the brand.
And then her heart begins to race, or rather did it slow. At the sight of the section marked, not prose.
So small, as if a slight. So hidden, as if from shame. So narrow, as if to be a step away from invisible.
It, the section marked Poetry.
And there she learned what others knew, that there would always be just these few.
The precious jewels, ones penned by Oliver, Colllins, Frost and such.
That shelves and rows, long deep and wide would not be needed to house the ones that bind the words of Poet.
Oh there were many in the store. Plenty for the masses.
But the heart goes looking for the ones that don’t take 367 pages to tell the story.
With plots that twist and turn and round the bend, a trail of 95 charachters, all ripe and developed richly.
There is death and drama, suspense and gore, the author delights, you’ve been strung along.
With storylines and subplot and subsubplots thick with trails and tales, long and winding, longwinded, long
suffering. The epic. With perfect punctuation.
Prose, the never ending we are almost there, the author woos you in.
The end is not as you had dreamed, no joy in a poet’s brief and pithy telling.
But now she goes the way of those and wanders off verbosely.
And like the poet in the corner simply lost in thought,
she lost her way to build her case for more bookcases
at the neighborhood Barnes and Noble.
Joining joyfully with Emily for Imperfect Prose
elizabeth w. marshall 