Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Surprise!

“If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it . . . .” 

― Heraclitus

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise." ― Alice Walker

The Muse, Modeled by Nina Longshadow at Opus

Midweek Motif ~  Surprise!

If only life could be serene with no upheavals and few changes in relationships. No surprises, please! But for waking up from the laziness that threatens daily perception? Nothing is better than surprise.

When were you last pleasantly surprised?

Your challenge: Write a new poem with surprise as a recurring motif.  The poem itself need not surprise, but if you can wake us up a little through a pleasant surprise, do!

Surgery

Apparently With No Surprise 

by Emily Dickinson

Apparently with no surprise,
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play,
In accidental power.
The blond assassin passes on.
The sun proceeds unmoved,
To measure off another day,
For an approving God.

Surprise by Dorothy Parker

My heart went fluttering with fear

Lest you should go, and leave me here

To beat my breast and rock my head

And stretch me sleepless on my bed.

Ah, clear they see and true they say

That one shall weep, and one shall stray

For such is Love's unvarying law....

I never thought, I never saw

That I should be the first to go;

How pleasant that it happened so! 

source

The Words Under the Words

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem

My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,

the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.

When I was sick they followed me,

I woke from the long fever to find them

covering my head like cool prayers.

My grandmother’s days are made of bread,

a round pat-pat and the slow baking.

She waits by the oven watching a strange car

circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,

lost to America. More often, tourists,

who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.

She knows how often mail arrives,

how rarely there is a letter.

When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,

listening to it read again and again

in the dim evening light.

My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her.

Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.

She knows the spaces we travel through,

the messages we cannot send—our voices are short

and would get lost on the journey.

Farewell to the husband’s coat,

the ones she has loved and nourished,

who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.

They will plant themselves. We will all die.

My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.

When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,

when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,

He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—

otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,

difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”

source

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

      (Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be Peace on Earth.)