Tag: poetry

Slow, Slower, Slowest

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 11 Comments

It may have started in nursery school with that game.

Do you remember the one when the music stopped playing you took a seat and if you

were slow you were out.

You had nowhere to sit.

It may have started with races and racing on the playground.

The fast were picked, the slow left out.

It may not matter where it began because it seeped deep into our every fiber.

And it is.

We race, hurry, scurry, fly by, rush, whirling dervish our way down through our days.

And we miss out on the small.

I hear a collective cry and sigh these days.

From women and moms and wives and mothers.

A cry of the heart.

To rest from the weary of the rush.

A cry of the soul to slow the pace.

And a cry of the eyes of the heart to see it all, record and mark.

Save and savor, this life, these days.

And I seek to find a way to slow.

And it looks a lot like poetry to me.

The fewer the simpler the spaces for breathing.

The shorter.

A place for the eyes and mind to meander down line, weaving along slowly

The words, the life, the road.

I long to be more the tortoise in the story now.

I was the hare, it sounds like harried to me now.

And missing the chair in child’s game seems sweet

Sitting cross-legged on the floor down low,

Slowly I embrace that too.

And of all the slow I now know

Makes us winners

almost every time

Slow to speak and quick to listen, love

 guard the tongue

Slowly slowly this I know,

Release the tongue, the words, the thought

Slowly slowly this I know.

Row row row your boat gently, merrily, slowly,

See the child’s play in the day

With eyes wide open

slow, slower, slowest.

See you at the finish line

Last one there wins.


Today is Day 13 in the series. I am joining others at The Nester. To read the collective click here or go to the page link entitled 31 Days on my home page.

Writing in community with Sandra Heska King

And now its time for your words. I long to hear from you. Jump in and join the conversation. There is more JOY when you speak too. Leave a Comment at the top of the page is waiting for your words. Click, write, speak, join this community. You may wish to subscribe and follow all the posts here.

The Simple

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

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.

 

Window Panes -Day 8

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

She played a game in chilhood. Two raindrops run down window pane, of car of home. She mans the race, Olympic judge of water racing.
Window pane the venue for drops that run like tears.
Eyes the weary travellers, raindrop snails,they wind their way down fogged glass, make and mark a watery zig and zag trail.
Who shall win a rainy droplet race? Which blue ribbon champion wins the rainy dual.
Winner puddles in a pile. Child’s play at the window for awhile.
And she sees the cross, a brace in pane, of wood. Horizontal setting gaze, vertical completes a frame.
Bracing life, and framing view.
Always holding, shaping, marking perimeters of a life view,
The eyes’ view, the looking out and looking past.
Stretching toward the future.
Seeing forward, looking out, a window on her world.
A perfect frame the crossed pane glass, always quartering life.
The pieces become bite-sized manageable. In fours, and eights or more the crossed-paned windows.
Her windcow on the world.

There was the childhood window, bedroom high, peering down below.
Scared of what she didn’t know.
Of monsters underneath the bed and in the closet too.
She sees a hundred stars and moons, the window frames the world.
There were the stained glass windows too.
Sunday sanctuary, art. An early primer into holy beauty.
Gazing off in wonder, with child’s eyes gazing in a trance toward glass,
In jewel toned beauty,
Blood red crimson, beauty contained, beauty framed, worship through the windows.
A gallery of art,young men, the Christ friends stand in solidarity, Peter and the rest.
Sun shines through Sunday windows, panes, azure blue, emerald green.
A thousand Sundays of window art, a portal to her God.
She stares while preacher preaches, lost in beauty, lost in art.
Bold window panes, a masterpiece of glass, windows to a wounded world of which the preacher preached.

And now she looks to frame the world without a windowpane.
Just plane and simple life view lense, with words, a window to her world.
A lense of grace, a lense of love, a lense of paneless gazing
On life, with hope,
All through the blood soaked cross-barred pane.
As much a she is able.

Counting gifts

*Hope for healing wounds of the body and soul
*Joy of family
*Joy of progress with middle man/child’s college plan
*Receiving a hundred dollars for my Compassion Child for a post a wrote. Thank you Compassion, I can’t imagine how my sponsored child will spend one hundred dollars
*More and more and more precious friends in community in this bloggy writing world.
*A increased hope and dream of a book one day
*Safe arrival of travelling loved ones
*Time spent back in my mountain cottage to write and wake to cold mountain air.
*A flat tire, yes in the right place
*My AAA tow truck operator was humorous and kind, good natured, and wearing a cross of our Lord on his neck.
*Seeing my sisters all in one room

Writing in community with The Nester, Ann, Laura and L.L. Barkat

The Poetic – Day 4 (Part 2)

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments


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