I turn to the language of my garden. What is it that the weeds are teaching me today? -- "Easy come, easy go." What about the bulbs? "There is a time for dormancy."
As a Master Gardener I really responded to this fertiile poem, thank you for sharing it! Could I ask to share it with other gardeners, fully crediting you of course? I live in the mountains and we just passed our first hard frost so are sailing into six months of winter now... but how lovely to remember that darkness is essential to prepare for the welcoming warmth of springtime sunshine. Thank you.
I was also thinking my vessel would be gardening and nature. An engaging poem - I do like the patient cave of being a bulb. No rush. Spring will come again. ♡♡♡
I turn to the language of Needs. When I struggle or mourn, I am curious as to what is it that is calling to be heard? What needs are underlying my expression whether that be sadness or celebration? Just this week in a high tide of tiredness, I paused and listened to the waves of sadness and uncertainty. Listening to my body, to my breath, my needs were for rest, integrity and wellness. I pondered on these over my busy week: two difficult funerals and a 20th anniversary wedding celebration and renewal of vows. Mourning and celebration.
How then, I inquire, do these needs live in me, become alive through me? I cancelled what I had planned for today and leaned into a day of rest and prayer and meditation. I walked slowly along the beach. I took my 88 year old father for a walk; and then after dinner, I sat and watched the light fade and night descend. I feel nourished and rested, and ready for bed and to let go of everything as I sleep tonight.
I turn to the language of needs and listen for what is most alive and calling me home. This, time and time again, brings for me: clarity, connection and a sense of belonging. In writing down my needs in my diary is like a haiku, simple yet complex, seasonal and surprising.
Happy blessed birthday Padraig. When I read your messages and respond to your prompts it meets my needs for creativity, inspiration and a sense of belonging to this wonderful community you nourish and nurture. Thank you.
Beautiful, Wendy. Reminded of Howard Thurman’s words: “Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
I love the idea of a haiku diary. I really enjoy haibun as a cathartic exercise. It lets me, at the least the way I do it, throw words upon words into a big descriptive mess and, after a breath and a moment's contemplation, tie it all together with the concise form of haiku.
Happy birthday, Pádraig. May this last year of your forties be filled with blessings of solitude and imagination. Thank you for including me/ us in your vessel each week.
I chose a drawing to share but it won’t copy here. It is a pen and ink heart with musical clefs surrounding it, light watercolor wash of red. I use it for birthday wishes.
This morning, I wanted also to use it as a symbol of love lost, a delightful friend in the garage where I live, so generous and kind with helping hands and happy spirit that filled that garage whenever he was present. He had an adorable baby daughter, immigrated from Africa, was so hopeful.
He was murdered two days ago, stabbed while pumping gas in the early morning. So now that drawing represents a dirge, a requiem, a heart filled with sorrow, immeasurable sadness and loss.
I hear your celebration and grief. A tragic loss that has ripples into all of life. His life, his daughters, his family... all of the community. I can imagine your heart with music lifting out into the space. Thank you for sharing your heart and love and grief.
I am heartbroken for you, your friend's family, and for the state of humanity that took your friend so violently. Sending you and embrace of peace and comfort.
How utterly sad the human form contains the capacity for great beauty as well as horrific evils. This I cannot explain, only notice, and perpetually try to grow the first garden ever larger.
Your tender story makes me think of all he has given his little daughter and, hopefully, all she will hear from those who remember him to her. May she carry his generosity, kindness and happy spirit with her as she grows up in this country he wanted to be her home.
Happy, happy birthday! I grew up listening to Prairie Home Companion, a staple radio show for American Midwesterners. My Dad loved the show, and every time it came on, I would roll my eyes and try not to listen. However, the mix of high and low art has captivated me. My Dad has long since passed, but I feel connected to him through that mix of bluegrass and opera and all the silly songs in between. When my daughter decided to learn how to play the violin, I decided to learn how to play the fiddle, two counterpoint forms.
I’m no midwesterner, though I still loved that show. At one point, with three little kids I’d pick up the youngest, about 3, and the two others, 7&9, would pick up brooms and we would dance around the living room singing about the joys of Powdermilk Biscuits. Every Saturday evening. Thanks for kicking up that memory. A real vessel for family bonding.
I turn to the podcast of The Moth for the stories, for a sense of connection to these strangers who are sharing a story from their lives. My favorites are from the Story Slams where someone threw their name in a hat and told an impromptu tale on a theme from the night. I so admire the bravery of standing up and telling a real story to a roomful of strangers. There is such meaning in ordinary lives.
I cherish the economy of using haiku (or more accurately senryu, because mine don't focus on nature or seasons that much) as a container for much larger concepts and feelings.
I have been informed that I taught a previous student 'to love haiku', which remains one of the greatest honours of my life.
I love to end a poem with a line that lingers.
Thank you for the opportunity to consider this more deeply.
I’m a haiku artist as well. The density and economy of the poems to convey sense and image will forever be essential to my life as well. So glad to see a fellow haikuist (senryuist) here!
I have done some haiku as well, especially through a year after my Japanese friend died. I didn’t actually know that haiku works with nature and seasons of the year. But that was exactly how the haiku came to me.
Happy Birthday, Pádraig, and thank you for this prompt.
I have turned to mosaic art to create beauty and order from pieces of objects.
I have worked with broken pieces of glass, pottery, seashells, and I have worked with cut pieces of lovely soft warm wool felt.
Mosaic art provides the opportunity to put pieces in place, to place color and pattern into pleasing designs. It also gives my fingers, hands and arms the opportunity to reach, lift, grasp, break, cut, press, smooth, wipe, caress, and polish.
I’ve actually been playing around with mixed meter, after reading a lot of George Herbert. I’ve been especially attracted to his strongly iambic concrete poems. It’s hard to get the music right while achieving a visual form—but the concentration it required to craft this type of verse can be a prayer in itself.
Thank you, Zina. I studied Herbert in college and have kept him close for 40 years. I have "The Collar" memorized and recite it aloud sometimes when I walk. The metaphysical poets both challenge and bless me.
We don't have a close relationship (our history is fraught with betrayals, lies & miscommunication) but if I scroll back far enough there are some earnest 'I love yous', pink love hearts & the most colourful emoji combos inside those grey bubbled text messages.
Ah, let us celebrate that particular day into which you, Padraig, were born. 🐸
“The container of form can help place your most important language in a structure adequate enough for the sounds your body needs to shape.” What lovely words huddled together. Thanks, Padraig.
It takes about three minutes. I don’t know why 3. Just unfolded this way. I compose music. Sometimes in relation to a poem, often haiku, written by someone else. I enjoy reciting the poem, then I play the musical reflection of the poem. Often playing the Japanese shakuhachi bamboo flute. Or, various Native American style flutes.
Or, I pick up the iPhone, open GarageBand, choose an instrument, often piano, Chinese guzheng, Chinese erhu, Taiko drums, and compose/improvise a piece. Then I transfer this to the laptop GarageBand, set up a mic, and record flute improv layered into the whole piece of music. Along the way I ask the piece what title it wishes to wear. These titles arise “on their own”.
Life itself in all her complexities is a haiku for me. These brief haiku intense encounters inspire my 3 minute musical haiga(usually paintings that illustrate a haiku). This music making is a form of digestion. It nourishes me. I thrive on Beauty. Beauty is my vitamin, protein, prayer. Meditation. From the movie Morgan “an island of sanity in a world of pain.” 🙈
I love musical haiga. I’m a haiku and haiga artist, as well. Your process sounds very much like my own with visual art, though my haiga take far longer to create than 3 minutes. What you create sounds lovely. I’d love to hear your work some day.
Blown away by all of your capacity & talent. How incredibly nourishing indeed!!
This passage of text here is So Beautiful:
“This music making is a form of digestion. It nourishes me. I thrive on Beauty. Beauty is my vitamin, protein, prayer. Meditation. From the movie Morgan “an island of sanity in a world of pain.”
Thank you for this prompt Pádraig, and a joyous happy birthday to you!
My container has been and will probably always be jazz, with ambient music a la Brian Eno or Gas being a close second. They are two very distant musical styles however they both evoke in me a sense of wonder, disturbance, and peace. Feeling notes and rooting around in the liminal spaces between the notes I always find some aspect of myself that needs acknowledgment or discovery. Listen to Kind of Blue, Birth of Cool, Mingus Ah Um, or Monk’s Music to just name a few of my favorites and lose yourself to those explorations. Navigating the sea of living has never felt so good.
I love this, Linda. I journal, too, and have many pages filled with my 8 year old self. I love how you say she appreciates having someone to listen to her. Beautiful. Thank you.
I don't know if this is an acceptable answer to the prompt...and I've tried very hard in the last hour to come up with a different answer...but it is nature that I turn to to hold me. The rhythm of the sea (I even imagine it in my breath--swelling, shrinking, swelling, shrinking), or the form of the forest or the sound of a stream. I cannot get away from the truth that it is THESE things that hold me in the (sometimes frequent) times that I feel desperate for a container.
I think my vessel is metta (compassion practice) & mudita (sympathetic joy) practice. It grounds me in the now & the shared-ness of both sorrow/suffering & joy we all experience as humans. It reminds me I am not alone, when I feel unwell, which is a comfort. 💜💜💜
Until very recently, I used to think of nature as the vessel that holds me, keeping me sane in a mad, mad world. But I’ve just noticed an essential nuance: nature and I are kin; ‘it’ is not my container, or my vehicle. Now, instead, I sense the warm, bare arms of a mother holding me, a babe, who is not even walking yet.
Poetry (free verse, prose poetry, haibun) and short stories are my true vessel, my trusty aqua-steed. In writing and reading I ride the waves, understand the storm (what there might be to understand), get drenched but don’t drown, and from this vessel I gaze into the depths, constantly being surprised by signs of life, as well as my own subconscious.
In thinking about my need for containment, a "pause" comes to mind. What helps me gather myself from scattered places into a place of peace or simple stillness, despite the confusion around me?
Two things come to mind: a moment of silence and a better question.
Both of these choices help me to get out of locked ways ot seeing or hearing so that I can consider a different perspective. Silence helps me reset. Considering a better question other than the one I am relentlessly asking, can help me to take in a different set of circumstances. . . . can open the door to possibility. . . . can help me get out of my own way.
I turn to the language of my garden. What is it that the weeds are teaching me today? -- "Easy come, easy go." What about the bulbs? "There is a time for dormancy."
A poem I wrote:
Let Me Begin Again
after Major Jackson and Philip Levine
Let me begin again
as a patient bulb
nestled in the dark earth
of early spring.
Let me begin this time
already knowing
the schedule of my blooming,
settled snugly on my basal plate,
gathering strength
below the surface, self-contained
and content in the damp.
This time, let me know
that the darkness is essential
to my ability to detect light.
Let me know my season,
know all things have theirs,
that mine will arrive
as sure as the earth spins.
My business is silent and secret –
let me not act with the rash urgency
of the weed, overeager,
tangled and choking
the plantings.
Let me emerge when
the pale, nudging light of spring
bids me
reach and reach
for the warmth until
my petals unfold.
I just love feeling like a bulb. thank you
As a Master Gardener I really responded to this fertiile poem, thank you for sharing it! Could I ask to share it with other gardeners, fully crediting you of course? I live in the mountains and we just passed our first hard frost so are sailing into six months of winter now... but how lovely to remember that darkness is essential to prepare for the welcoming warmth of springtime sunshine. Thank you.
Sure! Thank you for asking. I’m glad it resonated with you.
Sweet, Ruth!
The words about the essential darkness are comforting
I was also thinking my vessel would be gardening and nature. An engaging poem - I do like the patient cave of being a bulb. No rush. Spring will come again. ♡♡♡
I, too, am a gardener and love the image of 'already knowing the schedule of my blooming' 'content in the damp'. Thank you.
I turn to the language of Needs. When I struggle or mourn, I am curious as to what is it that is calling to be heard? What needs are underlying my expression whether that be sadness or celebration? Just this week in a high tide of tiredness, I paused and listened to the waves of sadness and uncertainty. Listening to my body, to my breath, my needs were for rest, integrity and wellness. I pondered on these over my busy week: two difficult funerals and a 20th anniversary wedding celebration and renewal of vows. Mourning and celebration.
How then, I inquire, do these needs live in me, become alive through me? I cancelled what I had planned for today and leaned into a day of rest and prayer and meditation. I walked slowly along the beach. I took my 88 year old father for a walk; and then after dinner, I sat and watched the light fade and night descend. I feel nourished and rested, and ready for bed and to let go of everything as I sleep tonight.
I turn to the language of needs and listen for what is most alive and calling me home. This, time and time again, brings for me: clarity, connection and a sense of belonging. In writing down my needs in my diary is like a haiku, simple yet complex, seasonal and surprising.
Happy blessed birthday Padraig. When I read your messages and respond to your prompts it meets my needs for creativity, inspiration and a sense of belonging to this wonderful community you nourish and nurture. Thank you.
Beautiful, Wendy. Reminded of Howard Thurman’s words: “Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
“I turn to the language of needs and listen for what is most alive and calling me home” Thankyou
what a beautiful way to think of needs. this is so uplifting
I love the idea of a haiku diary. I really enjoy haibun as a cathartic exercise. It lets me, at the least the way I do it, throw words upon words into a big descriptive mess and, after a breath and a moment's contemplation, tie it all together with the concise form of haiku.
Interesting use of needs. Too often we deny our needs out of a false sense of that denial making us better. Thank you for deep thoughts on need
Thank you Wendy, how deep and ligh, how simple and powerful. Thank you, I feel inspired.
Thank you, this is beautiful
Happy birthday, Pádraig. May this last year of your forties be filled with blessings of solitude and imagination. Thank you for including me/ us in your vessel each week.
I chose a drawing to share but it won’t copy here. It is a pen and ink heart with musical clefs surrounding it, light watercolor wash of red. I use it for birthday wishes.
This morning, I wanted also to use it as a symbol of love lost, a delightful friend in the garage where I live, so generous and kind with helping hands and happy spirit that filled that garage whenever he was present. He had an adorable baby daughter, immigrated from Africa, was so hopeful.
He was murdered two days ago, stabbed while pumping gas in the early morning. So now that drawing represents a dirge, a requiem, a heart filled with sorrow, immeasurable sadness and loss.
Celebration and grief…🙏
Dreadful May comfort fall upon you and well up within as you try to accept the unacceptable.
So sorry for the world's loss of this joyous man. May the drawing you describe bring you some comfort.
I hear your celebration and grief. A tragic loss that has ripples into all of life. His life, his daughters, his family... all of the community. I can imagine your heart with music lifting out into the space. Thank you for sharing your heart and love and grief.
So very sorry. How do we help to nurture respect and love of humanity?
Ah the way you hold the memories, up towards the heart, light and darkness honoured, so spacious. Thank you.
I am so very sorry for your loss.
Dear Annie,
I am heartbroken for you, your friend's family, and for the state of humanity that took your friend so violently. Sending you and embrace of peace and comfort.
So sorry for this loss sending you love
I am so sorry for this awful tragedy. May his soul rest in peace. Prayers for the beloveds left here.
I'm sorry for the loss of such a generous person in your life and in the world. Such terrible contrasts. Thank you for sharing.
so sad, Annie, for you and your friend's family and friends. Drawing is such a nice outlet and a beautiful way to honor such a lovely man.
How utterly sad the human form contains the capacity for great beauty as well as horrific evils. This I cannot explain, only notice, and perpetually try to grow the first garden ever larger.
Love to you, Annie
Your poem below to Sulliman, is touching and so sad.
Annie, I’m so sorry for your loss.
Your tender story makes me think of all he has given his little daughter and, hopefully, all she will hear from those who remember him to her. May she carry his generosity, kindness and happy spirit with her as she grows up in this country he wanted to be her home.
I wish I could see the drawing. It sounds really powerful to contain birthday wishes and love lost. Did you draw it?
Thank you. Yes. It just won’t copy from my photos. I use an iPad and iPhone only. Perhaps that’s why?
Happy, happy birthday! I grew up listening to Prairie Home Companion, a staple radio show for American Midwesterners. My Dad loved the show, and every time it came on, I would roll my eyes and try not to listen. However, the mix of high and low art has captivated me. My Dad has long since passed, but I feel connected to him through that mix of bluegrass and opera and all the silly songs in between. When my daughter decided to learn how to play the violin, I decided to learn how to play the fiddle, two counterpoint forms.
I’m no midwesterner, though I still loved that show. At one point, with three little kids I’d pick up the youngest, about 3, and the two others, 7&9, would pick up brooms and we would dance around the living room singing about the joys of Powdermilk Biscuits. Every Saturday evening. Thanks for kicking up that memory. A real vessel for family bonding.
Heavens they're tasty and expeditious!
Yes! PHC was always a favorite. I have downloaded a few of his audio books, just to hear him tell stories. What a great way to pass down tradition.
I turn to the podcast of The Moth for the stories, for a sense of connection to these strangers who are sharing a story from their lives. My favorites are from the Story Slams where someone threw their name in a hat and told an impromptu tale on a theme from the night. I so admire the bravery of standing up and telling a real story to a roomful of strangers. There is such meaning in ordinary lives.
ohhhhhhh thank you for mentioning The Moth! So excited to listen to it again
Happy birthday btw.
Hi Pádraig (and the Poetry Unbound community!)
I cherish the economy of using haiku (or more accurately senryu, because mine don't focus on nature or seasons that much) as a container for much larger concepts and feelings.
I have been informed that I taught a previous student 'to love haiku', which remains one of the greatest honours of my life.
I love to end a poem with a line that lingers.
Thank you for the opportunity to consider this more deeply.
Best wishes,
Casey
I’m a haiku artist as well. The density and economy of the poems to convey sense and image will forever be essential to my life as well. So glad to see a fellow haikuist (senryuist) here!
Pleasure to meet you!
I've never thought of myself as a 'haiku artist', but I love that phrase. :)
I will carry it with me now.
Take care,
Casey
I've always loved haiku, and now need to poems written in senryu form. Thank you for expanding my world of poetic form, Casey.
Hi Lisa,
It's my pleasure.
There is no difference in the form, just the subject.
Traditional haiku focus on nature, and use season words - known as 'kigai' in Japanese.
Poems that follow the 17-syllable format but don't focus on nature are known as senryu. :)
Enjoy your voyage of discovery!
Take care,
Casey
I have done some haiku as well, especially through a year after my Japanese friend died. I didn’t actually know that haiku works with nature and seasons of the year. But that was exactly how the haiku came to me.
Happy Birthday, Pádraig, and thank you for this prompt.
I have turned to mosaic art to create beauty and order from pieces of objects.
I have worked with broken pieces of glass, pottery, seashells, and I have worked with cut pieces of lovely soft warm wool felt.
Mosaic art provides the opportunity to put pieces in place, to place color and pattern into pleasing designs. It also gives my fingers, hands and arms the opportunity to reach, lift, grasp, break, cut, press, smooth, wipe, caress, and polish.
I have done that too. Beauty from brokeness
I’ve actually been playing around with mixed meter, after reading a lot of George Herbert. I’ve been especially attracted to his strongly iambic concrete poems. It’s hard to get the music right while achieving a visual form—but the concentration it required to craft this type of verse can be a prayer in itself.
Also happy birthday , Pádraig 🎂
Thank you, Zina. I studied Herbert in college and have kept him close for 40 years. I have "The Collar" memorized and recite it aloud sometimes when I walk. The metaphysical poets both challenge and bless me.
Oooh! I love this thought, Zina! Now I need to check out George Herbert. Thank you.
Actually you can start here. Karen Swallow Prior has covered a bunch of Herbert lately. Here’s Easter Wings: https://open.substack.com/pub/karenswallowprior/p/george-herbert-easter-wings?r=fjyz7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
And Poems Ancient and Modern did The Altar here: https://open.substack.com/pub/poemsancientandmodern/p/todays-poem-the-altar?r=fjyz7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I turn to the text messages of my mum.
We don't have a close relationship (our history is fraught with betrayals, lies & miscommunication) but if I scroll back far enough there are some earnest 'I love yous', pink love hearts & the most colourful emoji combos inside those grey bubbled text messages.
I miss her.
This is beautiful, Ashley. And just how life is: so mixed with pain and confusion and longing and love. Thank you.
Pain and beauty. The yearning to touch into the love inside the 'grey bubbled text messages'. Thank you for sharing your story.
Ah, let us celebrate that particular day into which you, Padraig, were born. 🐸
“The container of form can help place your most important language in a structure adequate enough for the sounds your body needs to shape.” What lovely words huddled together. Thanks, Padraig.
It takes about three minutes. I don’t know why 3. Just unfolded this way. I compose music. Sometimes in relation to a poem, often haiku, written by someone else. I enjoy reciting the poem, then I play the musical reflection of the poem. Often playing the Japanese shakuhachi bamboo flute. Or, various Native American style flutes.
Or, I pick up the iPhone, open GarageBand, choose an instrument, often piano, Chinese guzheng, Chinese erhu, Taiko drums, and compose/improvise a piece. Then I transfer this to the laptop GarageBand, set up a mic, and record flute improv layered into the whole piece of music. Along the way I ask the piece what title it wishes to wear. These titles arise “on their own”.
Life itself in all her complexities is a haiku for me. These brief haiku intense encounters inspire my 3 minute musical haiga(usually paintings that illustrate a haiku). This music making is a form of digestion. It nourishes me. I thrive on Beauty. Beauty is my vitamin, protein, prayer. Meditation. From the movie Morgan “an island of sanity in a world of pain.” 🙈
I love musical haiga. I’m a haiku and haiga artist, as well. Your process sounds very much like my own with visual art, though my haiga take far longer to create than 3 minutes. What you create sounds lovely. I’d love to hear your work some day.
Blown away by all of your capacity & talent. How incredibly nourishing indeed!!
This passage of text here is So Beautiful:
“This music making is a form of digestion. It nourishes me. I thrive on Beauty. Beauty is my vitamin, protein, prayer. Meditation. From the movie Morgan “an island of sanity in a world of pain.”
Just Wow. ✨Thank You for sharing.
Love your riffs on making music and poetry!
Thank you for this prompt Pádraig, and a joyous happy birthday to you!
My container has been and will probably always be jazz, with ambient music a la Brian Eno or Gas being a close second. They are two very distant musical styles however they both evoke in me a sense of wonder, disturbance, and peace. Feeling notes and rooting around in the liminal spaces between the notes I always find some aspect of myself that needs acknowledgment or discovery. Listen to Kind of Blue, Birth of Cool, Mingus Ah Um, or Monk’s Music to just name a few of my favorites and lose yourself to those explorations. Navigating the sea of living has never felt so good.
Lately I have turned to dialogue. I have been journaling with my 8 year old self. She appreciates having someone to listen to her.
I love this, Linda. I journal, too, and have many pages filled with my 8 year old self. I love how you say she appreciates having someone to listen to her. Beautiful. Thank you.
You’re welcome! I think we can learn a lot when we tap into the child within.
I don't know if this is an acceptable answer to the prompt...and I've tried very hard in the last hour to come up with a different answer...but it is nature that I turn to to hold me. The rhythm of the sea (I even imagine it in my breath--swelling, shrinking, swelling, shrinking), or the form of the forest or the sound of a stream. I cannot get away from the truth that it is THESE things that hold me in the (sometimes frequent) times that I feel desperate for a container.
I think my vessel is metta (compassion practice) & mudita (sympathetic joy) practice. It grounds me in the now & the shared-ness of both sorrow/suffering & joy we all experience as humans. It reminds me I am not alone, when I feel unwell, which is a comfort. 💜💜💜
Until very recently, I used to think of nature as the vessel that holds me, keeping me sane in a mad, mad world. But I’ve just noticed an essential nuance: nature and I are kin; ‘it’ is not my container, or my vehicle. Now, instead, I sense the warm, bare arms of a mother holding me, a babe, who is not even walking yet.
Poetry (free verse, prose poetry, haibun) and short stories are my true vessel, my trusty aqua-steed. In writing and reading I ride the waves, understand the storm (what there might be to understand), get drenched but don’t drown, and from this vessel I gaze into the depths, constantly being surprised by signs of life, as well as my own subconscious.
In thinking about my need for containment, a "pause" comes to mind. What helps me gather myself from scattered places into a place of peace or simple stillness, despite the confusion around me?
Two things come to mind: a moment of silence and a better question.
Both of these choices help me to get out of locked ways ot seeing or hearing so that I can consider a different perspective. Silence helps me reset. Considering a better question other than the one I am relentlessly asking, can help me to take in a different set of circumstances. . . . can open the door to possibility. . . . can help me get out of my own way.
so agree with you about the power of silence to reset me