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The poetry of life: a reminder to be present

The world is full of poetry.
The air is living with its spirit;
and the waves dance to the music of its melodies,
and sparkle in its brightness.

                                           ~  James Gates Percival, American poet

The poetry of life: waves dancing
Waves dancing – the poetry of life at Maslin Beach, South Australia

I discovered contemporary poetry when I was working through 27 Wild Days, the wild writing course delivered by the perceptive Laurie Wagner. This poetry is nothing like Wordsworth’s  “Daffodils” where you wander lonely as a cloud. This is the poetry of life in its rawness, emotions, and ordinariness. I was introduced to Maya Stein’s poem about being close to the bone, and words from Ellen Bass on marriage and Naomi Shihab Nye, whose poem “Valentine for Ernest Mann” was the jumping off point for my wild writing on Day 19.

These words from the second stanza resonated with me:

… So I’ll tell a secret instead:

poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,

they are sleeping. They are the shadows

drifting across our ceilings the moment 

before we wake up. What we have to do

is live in a way that lets us find them….


Poet-to-Poet: Naomi Shihib Nye Reads “Valentine for Ernest Mann”
from the Academy of American poets

And these are the words from my pages that day:

Poems hide in the deepest recesses of your mind, on the pages filled with your writing, on the hastily scribbled scraps of paper in your bag, on to-do lists. They hide in drawers and cupboards, in the car at the lights, when you’re alone with your thoughts. Poems hide in those notebooks you fill with ink, in your sketches, and on sticky notes. Hell, some of those sticky notes are poems. They’re in the sweet caresses and gentle kisses you’re gifted sometimes. That’s the poetry of life!

Love and poetry in preparing food
Preparing food for the family – love and poetry connecting

Poems are buried in the soil you’re working in the garden, in the cake you’re mixing for that family occasion, among the vegetables you’re chopping for your dinner. They’re in the grains of sand on the beach, in the foam of the waves you’re riding on your board, in cloud shapes, and in the leaves dancing in the wind of the giant Eucalypt in your yard. Poems are sneaky. They hide in places you least expect. In moments when you’re not paying attention. In the cutlery drawer. 

You have to look out for them.

poetry is in the grains of sand at the beach
Taking time to notice the poems in our life

Poems hide everywhere but we don’t see or hear them sometimes because we’ve let the busyness of life take over and we close ourselves off — from the beauty of ordinary things; from finding joy in ordinary moments; from being present for our feelings. But if you open your eyes, your ears, your nostrils, and take a deep breath, you’ll find them. You can also send them into the world if your open your heart.

You’ll find them as you walk that winding path of life — in the rocks along the way that trip you up when you’re not paying attention, in gestures and smiles, and in conversations if you listen for them. Sometimes you only hear a couple of words, but that’s enough. 

the gift of poetry in nature
Nature gives us the gift of poetry

Poems are in the grass beneath your feet, in the distant views across the hills, in the smell of sunburnt grass and in the reeds growing in the dam. If you use your senses while you stay present and see the joy in ordinary moments — you’ll discover them. You may find more than you think. More beauty, more kindness, more grace, more love. This is the poetry of life. 

These are some of the places where I find poems. I know that there are many other places when they can hide. So I hope that this reminder which I wrote for myself is a jumping off point for you to see the poetry in your life.

Colleen

Caught in the maelstrom of the moment

Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.

                                                     ~ Zadie Smith 

Obstacles
Sometimes unexpected obstacles in our path can sweep us into a maelstrom

A couple of weeks ago I had a frightening episode. Chest pain and a trip to the emergency department of our district hospital in the wee hours of the morning swept me into a vortex of confusion, fear and anxiety. Physical pain is such a distressing sensation isn’t it? So much so that it’s easy to get caught in the maelstrom of the moment — erasing what came before, blocking any alternatives in the present, and wiping out possibilities for the future. And even though my pain subsided within a few hours, that whirling moment stretched to a number of days.Continue Reading

The space between: journal reflections

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

                                                                                    ~  Guillaume Apollinaire

Golden Rose
Last chance to enjoy my Gold Bunny Rose, one of the first to flower in my garden

For the first time in my new temporary home I find some time to be here. It’s been a tough relocation — filled with complications, challenges, and situations that have set my teeth on edge. My first thought on opening this page was to write about the process of our relocation, but I found this post which was written about two weeks before we left our home in Adelaide. It was titled The space between what’s done and what’s yet to begin, and it reflects my thoughts at the time and brought to mind some lovely moments of just being.

I’m sharing it without editing as a journal reflection on that liminal space and as a small tribute to the final days in our old hometown. . .

Otters at the Adelaide Zoo
Saying farewell to the otters at the Adelaide Zoo.

. . .In two weeks, we will leave this place called home. We are packing up, closing down and getting reading to move on. And in this liminal space — between what’s done and what’s yet to begin, I’ve been busy with the practicalities and technicalities of integrating my work life and my passionate life story.

The busyness of finding solutions for integrating all of this into a neat new package —website, social media, a new sense of identity — has been consuming. So much so that I was forgetting to just be. The things that matter, the most important things, were taking a back seat.

What matters right now is to enjoy our final days here. In the midst of preparing to leave, there are still walks in nature, reading, and of course writing. Not the About me page or the list of services I’m offering or whether I should pin this blog post to a Pinterest board, but finding pleasure in the work of writing my story and being present right now in my life.

The Lane Vineyard
Vines ready for pruning at the Lane Vineyard, Hahndorf. Lunch in the Adelaide Hills with my best girl and amore mio

I understand that the practical aspects of how I will present myself to the world is important, but at the moment, it seems like it’s too much, too difficult to think about. So I’m taking a pause — crazy though it sounds with the movers turning up in thirteen days.

Serenity in the Himeji Japanese Garden
Tranquility in the Himeji Japanese Garden. A favourite place which always holds the space between

David Kundtz, in his book Quiet Mind stresses that stopping — whether for a moment or a month — can be the difference between simply surviving and thriving. To me, it’s like taking a deep breath, in order to remember who I am and what I want. I wrote a blog post about taking a moment to be still a while ago, but with all the activity (mind and body) happening at the moment, I lost sight of the benefits of what David calls ‘still points’. He says:

More than anything, one should have a feeling of freedom, a feeling of having no pressing needs (even though there are often pressing needs), and as complete a state of relaxation as is possible right now.

So the agenda for the next two weeks has been cleared of the technical, practical stuff that I know will be there, waiting for when the time is right and I’m stopping for a moment to regain my equilibrium. I’m going to focus on what matters right now.

West Beach, Adelaide
Beach walks in old haunts with Lily the princess dog

Some of that is to bid farewell to familiar haunts — walks in my favourite gardens and the beach, and as well as packing my precious belongings, finding time for writing and reading, as well as practicing my drawing and photography.  Finding joy in being present in this space between.

 The space between,
The space between what’s done and what’s yet to begin. Adelaide Botanic Garden wetlands looking serene

With the trauma of moving, I have only now come to appreciate the moments taken and enjoyed in that brief time before our departure. I hope that you too can find some stillness in your life to just be. Sometimes, doing nothing is the best thing to do.

Thanks Adelaide for some of the best moments of my life!

 

Take a moment (or a morning) to be still

take a moment to be still
Take a moment to smell the roses

Time spent doing nothing allows us to awaken what is most meaningful and valuable to us.

                                      ~  David Kundtz

“Life is busy,” is a common refrain when we ask someone how they are, or how life is for them. Society encourages us to work harder, faster, aim bigger, achieve more. Our lives are full of distractions, and in our connected world we are always thinking about the next new thing, checking our twitter feeds, sending messages and filling our time with unfocused busyness.

“The fast-paced rhythm of modern life conditions us to skim the surface of experience, then quickly move on to something new,” says Stephan Rechtschaffen. We are so harried, hurried, moving headlong to the new, that we forget to be intentional. We forget to focus our attention on the present.

Continue Reading

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