Friends,
It’s day one. Here we are.
Take a deep breath. Take another one.
Maybe one more.
Settle in.
Words. Poetry. Embodiment.
What do they mean to us?
I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. As I shared over the weekend when I announced the theme for this month, we live in a heavy time. We need reminders of hope, and that comes so often through words.
So I find it so fitting that the first word of our month is lifeline.
Lifeline
I knew it right when it happened, the moment that everything shifted, that I was in the in-between, liminal space between life and death, where there are people to notice, choices to make, a life to examine. I walked the path of every childhood home, remembered each person who held me, grieved many lost relationships and identities, and celebrated once again the small moments when I found my way back to myself. But it was there that the lifeline appeared, small as a child, myself as a child, standing there with a vase full of tulips, all kinds of colors I’d never seen before, asking me what I believe is next. How could I know? I whispered, but she just smiled, holding out the vase, holding out the possibility of what could be, asking me to believe something, anything, about the entire journey away from myself and back. I took the vase of tulips in every color, and she quietly smiled, tugging a string beside her, a line, to follow toward the New Way, toward Home, onto Another Path, any path that might be the one to guide me back, once again, to the life I’ve been waiting for.
I can’t wait to read what you write, friends.
Until tomorrow.
The lifeline
pulls me back
to
the
reality
of a world so different
from the one to which I have escaped.
The book has come
to the end.
The movie is over.
The song has been sung.
Can’t I go back
for just a while
to that place
that doesn’t exist.
A place without war,
or hate,
hunger
or oppression.
Can I linger here in peace
just a few more minutes
before
I am drawn back to a world
so full of need
that it seems impossible
The lifeline draws me back
because someone needs me.
The lifeline runs
between us.
From a poet with writers block, thank you for these prompts, Kaitlin! I've regretfully bailed on several poem a day challenges in the past year, but these prompts are really resonating with me, even if I haven't shared anything yet.
Here's what I wrote for Day 1, while sitting on a park bench. 💛
***
I have worried too much for the future.
I have pre-grieved almost everything
as if borrowing tomorrow’s ache
will make it easier to bear,
breaking off chunks of sorrow
and throwing them like rocks
in time’s river, hoping to lighten
some future load.
Am I really so clever?
Can I really cheat sadness?
I already miss them all —
the cool spring breeze in my hair,
the sharp smell of mown grass,
the church bell striking 5
in the town square,
the robin songs and quiet thump of
a stranger’s baseball in a practice mitt.
All these will pass away, it’s true.
But today
right now
they tie me back
to solid ground.