Adagio: A Poetry Project

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 6 Comments

Writing is, most often, a solo venture, a process worked deep inside the confines of one’s heart and soul. But when two pilgrim poets turn towards each other and embrace the tension that lies between, something new emerges.  A writing “pas de deux” is born and the two begin weaving their words together, in and around, over and under, into something bigger than themselves. The writing becomes a lifting, a balancing, a turning…and the words on the page become an Adagio.
Learn more of the birth of the Adagio project at Holly’s writing home.

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It is in this spirit that we have threaded together pieces of our souls as our offering to the world of poetry and to fellow poet friends. Most especially, though, we offer it as a gift, and lay it right at the feet of our Creative God who is  the Giver of this love of writing and purposeful word weaving.  Today we sing this song and tell some of our story…..elizabeth and holly.

Writing Across The Distance

Her words they twist and swirl creamy smooth

One into another and I drink them in deep and long

She dips her pen into the well of ink

That is her very crimson rushing pulsing life.

And brings up words to stamp white page.

She is like the smiths of old, holding passion fire hot and glowing

And working the ember into ghostly shapes

That cool only when set aside

Full of vibrant living breathing voice,  poetic prose

For all to know her very soul

She lives into days fringed with salt-crusted breezes

And her words they ripen and swell

And drip heavy the fruit of quiet days made full with patience and wonder

She dips her pen into places wet with tears of joy and sorrow mingled down

Always honest, her voice knows only raw and real

She a pilgrim soul on a journey long and winding

Open and bare her heart rests upon the feast table

She is waiting quiet and still

While the shaping takes place

She is still and she knows.

No room for mask or veil or artificial

Her art, like incense to her God.

And she’ll dip her pen in nature’s oil

And mingle earth with bone and flesh to make a  mix of all the world

Not leaving places unexplored, she will blend the wild and tame alike

And make a holy sacrifice and offering of her very  self

A calm and tranquil melody

Poetic heartfelt words.

Two pilgrims on a journey.

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Will you join us as we move in faith on this new poetry journey? And perhaps you might consider partnering with another writer to come along side us in this endeavor?  We covet your presence in this space.

Holly may be found writing often at her home, A Lifetime of Days. My writing home is here, wynnegraceappears, Elizabeth W. Marshall. We are writing across the distance as our homes are hundreds upon hundreds of miles apart.

Joining Jennifer, Eilleen, Emily and Duane

When Peace Walks In And Takes A Seat

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

Peace walked in at five o’clock sharp, sat down in comfy chair, sat fireside. And chatted like the days that never were before. Under a roof, and in a house, this one. All shiny penny new. There was a grown sound in the belly of the boy about to be a man. And he had caught Peace like you catch a cold. It just covers you up and you need boxes of Kleenex and some tender love from a momma. But here you need all eyes open wide to see that Peace has come and it was not caught, it was prayed for and waited on, and there are bits and pieces of the Prodigal all over this like one walks through the woods and picks up beggar lice. Its grace. But we’re not picking any of this off. No a momma thanks and praises and tells others like she did the other day. She told the momma with tears in here eyes, you stand on the edge of the cliff in that waiting. You stand hanging by the thread of hope, all worn and weary and dangling, and you never give up. You hold tight and hold fast and you pray hard and you claim and cling. And when the Peace stays longer than you thought you finally breathe and you exhale and you pinch your own skin and say it is not a dream. It is a walking miracle sitting by the fire and talking all grown-up man. A language so new and beautifully different, as foreign. And if they ever tell you otherwise, those who lose their hope and lost their hope all along the way, you say yes yes it comes, the peace. The journey walkers do walk in one day and drop their peace on a home. And the bag is full to overflowing with letters dipped in grace. Unwrap and open each one slowly. There is beauty there. Always cling hard, you momma warriors to the knowing that the one day peace will come. And maybe even at five o’clock sharp, as promised. But this time the promise kept, and the heart filled with peace and a new fullness of maturity and ripeness for the picking. With the tender fingers of the momma’s heart she picks up the pieces of the peace, holds them to her bosom. As longed for, waited for, peace settles on the home and sits by that crackling dancing fiery flame of warmth. She re-reads each letter sent straight with piercing to the heart. A bullseye to her soul. Savors the words spoken, written on her momma heart. They are good. And they warm more than any flickering orange flame from the brick laid hearth every could or would. Peace walked in at five o’clock sharp. I hope she’ll stay awhile. She warms the once cold places as she settles in and makes herself at home. I close the door and bolt it shut. While making up the guest bed, I pray Peace will stay a good long while.

joining Laura today at Laura Boggess dot com and with Jen at Finding Heaven Today and Heather for Just Write.

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Someday Is One Day Is Today

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the word of Christ – the Message – have the run of the house. — Colossians 3:17

One day the sun will hit the Magnolia leaves just right so that there are glistening greens of every shade and hue, even Moss and Hunter and Crayola’s New Spring Green, all in one tree.

And one day the house in its quiet will hum like a cat’s purr and the still will sound like a beautiful peace covered it in a blanket of goose down insulation. For a moment, cocooned in its own safe place, away from all the world.

And birds will chirp on repeat in their repetitive reset rhythmic cadence like a gentle alarm clock belonging to the Earth itself.

Children will grow while they are sleeping in the quiet space between childhood and adulthood and Thanksgiving and Christmas, dreaming of white lights and decorated homes with roaring crackling orange flamed dancers over the cut wood sturdy logs.

And she will know, that the one day she prayed for and hoped for is actually this day, this today, the day that the Lord has made. And that all the dreaming can now stop because someday sits curled up like contented milk filled baby with sweet bowed lip on the lap of her today.

And its all more than just okay.

Its simple. Its beautiful. And five will stand shoulder to shoulder in church and thank the One who gave her today.

Today.

Joining Deidra and her beautiful Sunday community.

I Know Now, A Little More About Writing And Living

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 5 Comments

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart — William Wordsworth

Writing is both mask and unveiling — E.B. White

Every day I learn a little more about writing and living and how they intertwine. Does living drive the writing. Doesn’t writing come from the living.

But writing feels like living a second time. It often feels like a second go around, a chance to grab a clearer understanding. To place the lens up again with the glass wiped clean. Out from the fog comes the changed perspective. Ever so slightly, a changed experience evolves. Or the experience changes, is evolved when the breathing is released on the page.

And so I didn’t keep my promise, of sorts to you and to myself, that I was on a bit of a blogging break. Because in some ways I was still writing at the desk in the corner of my mind. Penning phrases and re-living the days of this life.

Processing the flood of strangers at our family Thanksgiving who turned out to be lovely and wonderful. Well I only spoke to one or two of them and they were perfectly lovely. I found myself too busy visiting with family that I see less often than I’d like. Do I feel a twinge of guilt for not mixing and mingling with them. Yes, how did you know.

And sitting in a small circle of family, from two to well, over fifty two, as a little one was cheered on to let her sister pull her tooth. The one in front in that Christmas song. The one that would make her smile all wonderful and toothless. The very tooth hanging by a thread, twisting and turning like a white sail flapping in the wind, nearly untethered.

So White was right. It’s an unveiling.

It’s a re-writing in the remembering. It’s life unveiled as the fingers dance out on the backlit keypads and reframe from memory the fragments of a life, played out again in recessed corners, deep crevices of wrinkling wobbling memory.

There are some seasons where slowing down the recording, the pulsing breathing, rebreathing of events seems to snuff the very life out of the living. To leave it in a dusty corner of the mind feels like an early burying of a life. An early death of sorts. This is that very season for me.

Because if White is right, then leaving the events veiled kills the potential for sharing the very heartbeat of the writer with her readers and her God.

If unveiling is sharing, these small seemingly wondrously mundane events where you may say I know, I have lived that, felt that, I am not so alone after all, then pull back the veil. To shared humanness.

We sat in the sunlit swamp with barely walkers and ones with walkers. And the stories of lives intersected like a pile up on 1-95. But rather than life-taking it is life-giving.

It is the aunt who retires in weeks after years of working and watching her face muse and ponder her plans.

It’s hearing of new jobs and hurt knees, new joints. Of aging and birth piled up like raked leaves, a collection of color and signs of changing seasons.

And it’s watching teenagers heave back in shared laughter at the giddy free falling joy of family who are more like friends and all their favorite foods, served outside by a blue river that most days is swampy muddy brown.

But today. Today it’s blue, the sky is blue, tummies and hearts are full. And the writers can’t stop reading the moments in reverse.

Retrieving yesterday’s moments which today are fresh memory. And while they are fresh, I will write with today’s breath yesterday’s breathing. Yesterdays living. Dip down into the inkwell of yesterdays still-wet stories, and stroke out understanding with an unveiling of the seemingly mundane moments.

And hope that our shared human experience gives legs to the stories and sets them out to run free.

And maybe we will all understand a little more about writing and living.