Around Us: Celebrating National Poetry Month

It is always smart to notice what we need around us.

Around Us   by Marvin Bell

We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane's wing, and a worn bed of 
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks--a zipper or a snap--
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.

Fresh Thinking: Why We Write

Even though I have shared this poem before, I looked at it with fresh eyes this evening. It led to a new way of thinking about writing, some fresh thinking.  I love the line "our words make us visible."

Why We Write

By Julia Cameron

There are many things which resist naming,

And that is why we write.

We write because language is slippery,

And the truth is.

We write because

The light we have to see by

Is always shifting

Never forget that writers are prophets.

We speak in tongues.

We testify.

We are for each other a believing mirror.

Our words make us visible.

Our listening makes us heard.

Never forget that writers are soldiers.

Our writing is the long march,

The walk into time.

Each word is a drum.

We sound it across great distances,

Reaching one another and ourselves.

Every poem is a day's march.

A celebration more necessary than water or wine.

Every poem is a drink of blood.

Never forget that writing is an act of courage -

Not on the days when it is simple and we discount it.

Not on the days when it is hard and we write like sand.

Our words are torches.

We pass them hand to hand

And mouth to mouth

Like a burning kiss.

Never forget to say thank you.

Every syllable is a grace.

The Art of Disappearing

The Art of Disappearing

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time. 

Naomi Shihab Nye

Buy Hyacinths to Feed thy Soul

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft, 

And from they slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,

Sell one, and with the dole 

Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

Moslih Eddin Saadi

Working Together

WORKING TOGETHER

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

~ David Whyte ~

(House of Belonging)

Teaching Poetry: Invisible Indian

It seems only fitting that I would teach poetry more intensely to my students during National Poetry Month. We read and discussed this poem today. Ninety per cent of my students are Native American. They understood the poem, but were surprised that somebody thought the woman was Hispanic. They live among their people on the reservation where I teach. Indians know Indians. The last verse was the one that struck all of us. We wondered what "the turquoise in my heart" meant.

Invisible Indian

A few weeks ago

the cashier at the grocery store,

seeing my dark hair

and dark eyes,

counted my change

back to me in Spanish

Three days later

the waitress at the pizza place

made the same mistake.

Happens all the time

since I moved to Miami.

As though without buckskin, braids and beads

I don’t exist.

At a pow-wow last Sunday

I spoke to a Cherokee

wearing faded black jeans and a tee shirt

standing beside a display of stone sculptures

I told him I admired his work.

He didn’t mistake me for Hispanic

But saw that I was Indian

and even guessed my tribe.

Other Indians always recognize me.

Maybe they hear the echoes of the drums

In the rhythms of my voice.

Glimpses the shadows of my Indian grandmother

In the chiseled cheekbones of my face,

Or see the turquoise in my heart.

-Deloras (Dee) Lane