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Today is Day 23 in the series, 31 Days, The Art of Noticing. And as always, thank you for joining me here for poetry and prose…and noticing.
Ready, Set, Go Notice
A Little Game of Noticing
Tag: 31 Days
Gazing At The Ordinary Marvelous
Today is Day Poetic
Have you noticed a little quiet pause. Is it bending or breaking the 31 Days “code of writing to triple up” one post to cover three days in the series. Ah, I have been living and traveling and noticing. And thinking of this place and space while it was quiet. Were you out noticing while it was quiet? Have you even noticed that I was gone?
Today is Day 21 ( and 20 and 19)
Gazing at The Ordinary Marvelous
I have wondered through a maze of noticing
Sat on every word unfurled from preacher’s lips
Not mine, on prayer, unending
Every note, black, ballet dancer up and down
That old red hymnal, still smells like memories of Methodist
Smells a certain way
Doxology dances off the yellow pages, runs rifts
Of remembering ordinary marvelous
Weaves a red thread through the years and days
And I have wandered through a maze of bittersweet
Returning with my fragile heart and mind
I long to change a memory
Bur, for all my trying I can’t rewrite it
Into something better, brighter, sweeter
Babys at the alter, dipped in sacred fonts
Will stir the waters that run deep
Inside a mother’s broken heart
I have wondered through the winding
Roads that lead me home to Woodland Heights
Where I am met with fond recalling
Early morning, late at night
Bookended by the generations
Stories that go on and on, echoing down the mountain
There are no secrets anymore
Rolling tires crunch crush the brittle leaves
A slow and gentle breaking
On this road to my returning
I have come back home again, met by autumn’s gold dust shining
She opens wide the door for me.
Everything is ordinary
Marvelous as it should be
Concentric circles of recalling
Spokes that find their way back to the center
Tines which gently poke inside, time and time again
Urge me to recall while listening to the echo of
The winsome valley train
Everything is marvelous
The circles spin like hands clockwise round the rounded clock
Face the moments, ordinary
Savor all the pieces of the past
Colliding with the present
All this noticing
Never seems to stop
For if it did and if it were
If the door to my eyes and memory
Were to close and come to final rest
Death would meet me at the end of marvelous
Where all the ordinary settles into peacefulness
While time presents herself
At daybreak, new and wondrous once again
I go forth to gather
All the ordinary marvelous
Where we sing loud and joyful
A searcher’s song, a hymn of praise
Let Noticing her loud and lively anthem raise.
(To read all posts in this 31 day series, The Art of Noticing, click here to land on Day One and a listing of all posts) I am joinging The Nester at The Nester dot com for October. Click here to check out some of the other writers/bloggers who are accepting this writing challenge. There are some wonderful writers participating in several cool categories.
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Joining Laura Boggess at Laura Boggess dot com . It is where I go on Mondays for a writer’s Playdate.
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Wink, Blink, Nod and Noticing
Today is Day 16
Wink, Blink, Nod and Noticing
She noticed between blinks
And after she wiped the sleep
From her eyes, deposited in the dead of night
By the one who comes when she dreams
The same one who deposits poetry on her pillow
Or so it seems
She added a second to her gaze
Stared long enough to penetrate the foggy haze
Caught with her net the moments and minutes
The instants worth saving suddenly seem infinite.
She felt it in breathes, found more in between beats of her heart
They slipped from the shadows, these new moments she now
Noticed, every
Wink, blink and stare
Time floats through the air
Sails with the greatest of ease
While we are sleeping and eating and saying our prayers.
She noticed that it was the smallest of things
That she held both tight with all her might
And had carelessly missed, they slipped
Through her fingers and into the cracks
This new realignment, adjusted her heart
To see all that was precious, tiny and small
The voice on the phone reminded her of this
And she, the detester of cliche and worn weary phrase
Adopted the words in heart that day
Anyway
As she travelled half blind down the highway
Shrouded in worry, dwelling on things she had missed.
This is not a dress rehearsal
This is for real
Do-overs are rarely part of the plan
This is it, this is all, this is the real deal.
This side of heaven, it’s gift to hold loose in our hand
For all the grace and forgiveness
She soaks in like a dry rag
She’s comes to know
In the blink of an eye
And a wink of her soul
As she nods her head at the truth
Of what she’d been told.
This is your life
Don’t blink
Act One
Act Two
And the final one too
What you are doing and saying
From New York, to Paris, to Kalamazoo
It is true
It is now
This minute
Though paved with His goodness and oodles of grace
She was reminded
She is breathing and living
These days of her life
So she vows to renew
Her vows
To soak in and notice it all
Including not excluding the pain
And suffering
Disappointment and shame
And that makes the road
The one paved with grace
More important than ever
As
She recalls the valuable
Advise of a sage
Who told her repeatedly
This life, it isn’t a race
We are winners
Sojourners, journeymen
Fellow travellers here
Noticing
Noticing
Noticing it all
From the moment the sun breaks
Until nightfall
And more important than anything else, the middle
The moments, the center, the time in between
These are the greatest, the smallest
The most important
Small things.
The repetitions of extraordinary
Ordinary
Daily routines.
The cream of an Oreo
The jelly in a jelly doughnut
Wink and its over
Blink and its gone
She’ll lay her head down
On soft goose down
And nod off tonight like she does every one
Knowing tomorrow she’ll vow yet again
To go forth from slumber
A new song she’ll sing
A song filled with promise and hope
Into the land that has a new name
Wink, Blink and Nod
And now
Noticing.
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Ready, Set, Go Notice
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Rolling Up My Shirt Sleeves On This Noticing Thing
So today I am digging down a little deeper. Doing some reading and some searching. Putting on my lab coat. And looking for rich and meaty pieces to fold into a post on day 8. Today is day 7. Will you excuse me while I step into my laboratory, my world of words and books and inspiration. I have some goodies for you though that I want to share today. And then won’t you come back tomorrow for some words I’ll be working on for you? If you just popped in here or have missed some posts you can read Days 1-6 here.
I often go down to the shrimp docks with my dogs at dusk, close to sunset. The days are getting shorter. But it is shrimping season and there is a heartbeat there that is palpable. It is as if the docks, the life of the shrimpers changes, though I know their traditions and their routines may seem well established. But for me, I see a different sky, I may smell a variation of the smells wafting in from the salt creek. I love to do my noticing there. There is peace down by the water. It is a bankable peace. When I hop up on my chocolate covered bicycle seat and head that way, I know that my exhale and my inhale will bring quiet in my life storms.
And that today’s blank canvas was a gift. I only need to ask myself, did I participate as an artist in taking what I was given. Did I invest in the canvas with a creative and generous heart. And most importantly, did I make a beautiful offering back to God, back to my family, back to this world.
My son just called me and asked me “mom, can we have taco’s for dinner.” I notice this is rare, for him to request a meal. I notice that there is some longing in his almost 19 year old soul for me to creatively love him through the comfort of food and sustenance. I hope that I will hear his longing, executive this dinner with creativity and love which at the end of the day says I notice you, I love you and I care for you. And I hope I make some darn good tacos.
I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs. – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
So I am off to discover more, read more, and notice more. To fill my art box with tools with which to paint this canvas; I will see you tomorrow on day 8. I am going off now into a place of noticing. Ready, set, go notice. Until we meet again.
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Joining Laura Boggess at Laura Boggess dot com.
elizabeth w. marshall 