After a fairly unproductive day, I ate a small dinner outside the back of my apartment which is a small slab of concrete upon which there are two small tables, and three chairs. A neighbor was outside a few apartments away. He was on the phone and holding one of his young children. They both went inside shortly after I finished eating. Perhaps they knew the rain was coming.
Continue reading “Poem: When I Say I Love the Rain – 14 June, 2021”Tag: Poetry
bookmark_borderPoem: A Melancholic Watercolor
A Melancholic Watercolor
The trouble with losing someone who opened your eyes to a new way of looking at things, a wonderful new vision, is that after they're gone your own eyes remind you of them, seeing what isn't there. And so everything is shaded, slightly greyed, and life becomes, for a time, like a melancholic watercolor. It's a beautiful gift... a terribly beautiful gift.
bookmark_border15 April 2021 (feat. The Blanket poem)
Another night of restlessness.
I wrote a poem while lying in bed. I think it’s too sentimental, and therefore too amateur. Is sentimentality amateur? If so then there’s no hope for me. I am far too sentimental.
Yet I have problems with sentimentality. At least overly sentimental writing.
— (read on after the poem for an unintentional book review) —
Continue reading “15 April 2021 (feat. The Blanket poem)”bookmark_borderPoetry Spotlight: “Kindness” – Naomi Shihab Nye
Recently, my dear friend Ranu shared a poem on social media by Naomi Shihab Nye. I had only come to learn of Nye’s poetry back in 2019, when a poetry newsletter shared a list of poems to be read, in the place of, or alongside prayers, during Thanksgiving dinner. In response to that post, I shared that first poem of hers, which had struck me so, and continues doing so each time I return to it. That poem is Red Brocade.
This began a brief volley of shared poems, ushering from her a link to a video of actress Emma Thompson reading the poem Kindness. In her preamble, Thompson dedicates the poem to humanity’s collective future, speaking about the need to consider a shift in our priorities and move towards a more kind, empathetic society.
What the crisis has made so painfully clear, is that we can’t go back to normal. We have to replace some of our priorities with others. We have to place people before profit, operation before competition, and above all, we have to access what has been so abundant…which is kindness.
Emma Thompson in her preamble to reading Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Kindness.