Angela Parlin

So Much Beauty in All This Chaos

31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Peace of Wild Things}

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return to the wild peaceWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 6.

We should all spend time outside each day. I don’t know about you, but I spend too many hours indoors.

As a remedy, I sometimes I work at the kitchen table near the propped-open door to the deck. Hearing the wind rustling through the trees and birds fighting over seeds at the feeder does something for my heart. It’s not all the way outside, but it’s close.

Long ago, I posted this poem, one of my favorites, on the bulletin board at my desk, the one I don’t actually work at very often. 🙂 Enjoy.

 

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

///////////

I wonder if so often when I misplace my peace, if the answer is simply to spend more time outside.

I say I wonder, but I already know what kind of person I become when I spend extended minutes under the sky.

There I see the rest of the beauty, and it’s not that I forget the chaos of the day. It’s not that the challenges disappear or the discouragement dissipates.

Out there, I realize I can walk away for a bit and the whole thing doesn’t all fall down.

Ohhh, right–it wasn’t me holding everything together.

In the presence of still water or even angry waves, I remember I have no control over the things I fear. I remember Who does control all things–He Who is good and true and beautiful and eternal. Who is acquainted with all this growing old and wearing away and falling down and rising up again.

He Who endures forever and ever, Who is seen through all this worldly beauty.

The Lord is God, and He has made His light shine on us. Psalm 118:27

It takes a few minutes, but I confess the truth. I’ve been taxing my life again, imagining losses that haven’t even happened. Why do I continue to repeat this?

Once again, I return to the wild. I take a walk in the woods past the yard, thick with green and a melody of snapping sticks underfoot. I imagine snakes hiding out here like sharks in the ocean, hoping they’re at least as rare.

Somehow I’ve left the rest of the world behind me. I come into the peace of wild things, and their holy message sinks ever deeper to my core.

Like Berry, I rest in the grace of the world–and I’m free.

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

Name the forethoughts of grief with which you tend to tax your own life.

*Find this also at PurposefulFaith.com.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {House on the Hill}

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poetry writing prompts 31 days dreamWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 5.

The House on the Hill

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

They are all gone away;

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray

The winds blow bleak and shrill

They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-day

To speak them good or ill:

There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stay

Around that sunken sill?

They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play

For them is wasted skill:

There is nothing more to say.

There is rain and decay

In the House on the Hill:

They have all gone away,

There is nothing more to say.

///////////

I drive past the house every day, on the way or way back to school.

It’s become my daily drive’s daydream.

I think there’s a wide blue desk in front of that great window, robin’s egg blue, and so many books like good old friends line the office walls. She sits there, clicking away letters on her keyboard, trading glances between lake and green.

She’s a little lonely, there with the laundry and the dog and the shelves of old books. But soon the kids will be home again, so there’s an urgency.

Now it’s time to make word counts, and now it’s time to make words count.

The golfers keep her company, in a far-off way. She watches them saunter through weekdays in packs, with all their caddies and carts and bags. Today they leave the workday behind, some of them forever.

She wonders, do they love their own winter season, with long days of work behind them?

Or do they dream every day of their summer, even fall, the good old days of building and dealing and keeping up?

She sees only a piece of the game, only one hole visible from the front window. Sometimes they seem to be having the time of their lives, she notices, and other times they’re bottling anger. And isn’t that just the way life works?

What would it be like to take up golf now? To throw the work away and run off to play with friends the entire afternoon?

What would it be like to live in the house on the hill on the course before the lake?

To know this is where we are meant to be. This is right. This is settled. This is home now.

I wish I knew.

I dream of seeing a For Sale sign in the yard. I dream of settling deep down in there, just off the parkway.

But there are a lot of rooms in that house. A lot of windows to keep clean. It’s an awfully big house to stay in alone all day. Even with the books and the dog and the laundry. Even with the golfers swinging by.

It’s not the kind of house you dream of keeping to yourself all day. It should be hosting lunches and book clubs and pool parties and people.

It should be doing something. Something more than listening to typewriter keys and the churning washer and the dog, barking again at people passing by.

Something more than waiting for the fountain’s next spray like clockwork in the middle of the lake.

 ///////////

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

Write your own poor fancy-play, your own imagined story based on a house or some other object.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Today}

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Today I have lived a poemWelcome back to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 4.

Sometimes poetry feels like magic. It carries us away like a daydream.

But sometimes, poetry captures the beauty of the most ordinary, day after day, pieces and parts of a regular life, making them feel like magic. That’s what Fuller does here, in her poem, “Today”. She speaks of common activities, canning and sweeping, polishing and embroidering.

But in the middle of this simple poem, she stops me with, “I have baked a sunshine cake.”

And I sit in my everyday living room contemplating, what is a sunshine cake? Is there such a thing? How does it taste? Lemon? Butter? Banana?

I wonder if it’s like my childhood favorite–Angel Food Cake frosted with whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

Maybe it’s that Paula Deen Chocolate Ganache cake I used to bake for baby showers? The one on which I’d pile a handful of stunning pink roses?

Or maybe baking a sunshine cake has nothing to do with baking a cake.

Maybe it’s a metaphor for a way of seeing beauty within the chaos of even the most ordinary days.

I hope that one line stays with me a while, and changes my approach to the usual, regular, typical moments in my life. At the end of each day, I want to look back and say, Today I have baked a sunshine cake. Today I have lived a poem.

 

“Today”

by Ethel Romig Fuller

I have spread wet linen

On lavender bushes,

I have swept rose petals

From a garden walk.

I have labeled jars of raspberry jam,

I have baked a sunshine cake;

I have embroidered a yellow duck

On a small blue frock.

I have polished andirons,

Dusted the highboy,

Cut sweet peas for a black bowl,

Wound the tall clock,

Pleated a lace ruffle…

To-day

I have lived a poem.

///////////

 

Today I have rubbed four “little” backs in the dark,

hugged and hustled and sent them off to school.

I have laundered football jerseys, stacked dishes,

and found 38 tiny green army men a home within my own.

I have sipped black iced tea, checked email,

spread creamy white cheese on a mini bagel.

I have read a chapter and written a poem,

prayed for my little people and laughed at words they said yesterday.

I have watered flowers on the front porch and pinched away the dead,

watched a show and cried at the beauty of a graduation speech.

I have made new to-do lists, and spoken with friends over Voxer.

I have picked up and put away, clicked these keys away,

sat on hard bleachers squinting at the soccer sunshine.

I have blared an old song with the deck door wide open.

I’ve danced with my whole heart, first together, then alone.

Today I have lived a poem.

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

How have you lived a poem today? Maybe you should write your own version of “Today”.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Bygones}

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beautiful short bygonesWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 3.

Today I’m sharing an excerpt of a poem written by the late Marina Keegan, an award-winning author, journalist, poet, and activist who passed away just a few days after her graduation from Yale.

I happened upon a book of her essays, The Opposite of Loneliness, in my local bookstore one afternoon, and fell in love with her unselfconscious youthful insights and observations of human nature. I walked away wishing I could read more of her. I hope these words inspire you.

“Bygones” {An Excerpt}

by Marina Keegan

I had a dream the other night that I was checking my email.

That dream sucks.

And woke to woes of seniors writing love songs for tomorrow and

Tomorrow and the melodies that flirt us forward,

whispering the next thing and the next thing and –

so we beat on

birds flocking south until

we circle round and realize maybe

maybe all that running wasn’t worth it.

Maybe we should build a cabin.

Or teach high school. Or use our hands.

My palms are smooth as words –

Weak with fashion and double spaces.

I want everyone else’s club and job and class

The grass I sleep in always browner than

Than that around erasing dreams

To sit and breathe because you

Only bank for two years then it’s over

And twenty two is nothing new

It’s just another chance to build

For when we’re twenty three and twenty four

And time begins to sell for more than

Any 9 a.m. to never.

We’re not stuck. That’s the thing, we’re not stuck.

We owe no one our nothings.

Do you wanna leave soon?

No, I want enough time to be in love with everything…

And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.

///////////

I didn’t know it then.

I’d heard the way you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. In high school, an ex-boyfriend passed me a note with lyrics to a song that said as much.

My Dad said his favorite season of life were the years my sisters and I were all home with them together. Especially the years before school, before we all got busy living our lives. When he worked 2nd shift, we all lived the majority of our daytimes in that little brown house with the plaid sofas and shaggy brown carpet. All of us eating and playing, crying and growing, laughing and needing together.

Pastor said it from the front, maybe 12 or 13 years ago, The days are long…but the years are short.

The years are short.

The years are short.

I had heard, so I guess I knew. But not the way I know it now.

Not the way I know it every time we say goodbye. Every time I drop them off or they grow another inch and tower over me while I’m making them snacks in the kitchen.

Every time I wade back through the snapshots on the coffee table, full of little tinies in silly hats before preschool or lining pirate figurines all the way up the stairs and jumping up and down for a putt-putt hole in one on the 5th try.

Full of them wrestling on the grass in the middle of a pumpkin patch or dressing up baby sister in a Ninja Turtles shell.

Also rolling in the snow and when they couldn’t help but wear their joy on Christmas mornings, and a tiny ballerina in pigtails with angel eyes or wearing her little jeans that made me call her Sassypants.

Pictures from that day at the Zoo with a group of friends, where 2 big brothers held Sassypants’ hands, one on each side to protect her when they could have run off with the boys.

And oh the parties and Lego Fests and beaches and NC state fairs. And then that little line of pirates turned into princesses, and then race cars and army men, all the way up these stairs we climb each day.

There I go again. Not letting bygones be bygones.

Should I work on letting go? Move on? Get a life of my own? Or will I live forever longing for the past?

I only know today feels fragile. Feels like the beginning of a long letting go.

I’m determined not to let these relics fade into bookshelves. Not to let the coming moments morph into mementos.

I’ve had enough time to fall in love with everything, and I still want more.

So I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.

poetry writing promptsWriting Prompt:

Write about a “so beautiful and so short” season of your life. Did you know it then, or only after it was over?

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Pax}

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one GodWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 2.

It’s Sunday, the first day of a brand new week, and also the last day of this lovely fall weekend. I’ll keep Sunday posts short. Today’s poem talks a little about what matters most to me, which is being at one with the living God, living as a creature in His house.

In the following poem, D.H. Lawrence ushers us into a cozy living room where a cat sleeps in a chair. I feel like I’m there, even though I am not a cat person. Growing up in the country with numerous litters of quick-to-wander-off-and-die cats tends to make one “not a cat person”.

But when the poem begins, suddenly I’m the cat asleep on the chair, yawning before the fire, with a deep calm in my heart. At one with the master of the house. Which is everything. Enjoy…

“Pax”

by D.H. Lawrence

All that matters is to be at one with the living God

to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair

at peace, in peace

and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,

at home, at home in the house of the living,

sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world

yawning at home before the fire of life

feeling the presence of the living God

like a great reassurance

a deep calm in the heart

a presence

as of a master sitting at the board

in his own and greater being,

in the house of life.

///////////

But as for me, it is good to be near God. Psalm 73:28

Writing Prompt:

Write about what matters most.

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