Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Abundance

“You can’t use up creativity. 

The more you use, the more you have.” 

~ Maya Angelou

Allegory of plenty

“Abundance is all around us. Only our efforts at tower-building blind us to it, our gaze forever skyward, forever seeking to escape this Earth, this feeling, this moment.” 
~ Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World . . . 

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Midweek Motif ~ Abundance

To me abundance means "more than enough."  I believe everyone can have enough because abundance exists: abundance of money, food, love, water, etc.  It's possible that scarcity is fake.  

Harvest time makes me aware of abundance.  So does spring, when rain and flowers abound.

Your Challenge:  In a new poem ~ show what, if anything, makes you aware of abundance.

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Vasudhara, Goddess of Abundance,  1082 AD

I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land

BY RITA DOVE

Life's spell is so exquisite, everything conspires to break it.

~ Emily Dickinson

It wasn't bliss. What was bliss 

but the ordinary life? She'd spend hours 

in patter, moving through whole days 

touching, sniffing, tasting . . . exquisite 

housekeeping in a charmed world. 

And yet there was always 

more of the same, all that happiness, 

the aimless Being There. 

So she wandered for a while, bush to arbor, 

lingered to look through a pond's restive mirror. 

He was off cataloging the universe, probably, 

pretending he could organize 

what was clearly someone else's chaos. 

That's when she found the tree, 

the dark, crabbed branches 

bearing up such speechless bounty, 

she knew without being told 

this was forbidden. It wasn't 

a question of ownership— 

who could lay claim to 

such maddening perfection? 

And there was no voice in her head, 

no whispered intelligence lurking 

in the leaves—just an ache that grew 

until she knew she'd already lost everything 

except desire, the red heft of it 

warming her outstretched palm.

Abundance by Marianna Ochyra (2015)

Happiness 

BY PAISLEY REKDAL

I have been taught never to brag but now

I cannot help it: I keep

a beautiful garden, all abundance,

indiscriminate, pulling itself

from the stubborn earth: does it offend you

to watch me working in it,

touching my hands to the greening tips or

tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild

the living and the dead both

snap off in my hands?

The neighbor with his stuttering

fingers, the neighbor with his broken

love: each comes up my drive

to receive his pitying,

accustomed consolations, watches me

work in silence awhile, rises in anger,

walks back. Does it offend them to watch me

not mourning with them but working

fitfully, fruitlessly, working

the way the bees work, which is to say

by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure?

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

 Peace embracing Plenty by Peter Paul Rubens (1633)

In Harvest

BY SOPHIE JEWETT

Mown meadows skirt the standing wheat;

I linger, for the hay is sweet,

New-cut and curing in the sun.

Like furrows, straight, the windrows run,

Fallen, gallant ranks that tossed and bent

When, yesterday, the west wind went

A-rioting through grass and grain.

To-day no least breath stirs the plain;

Only the hot air, quivering, yields

Illusive motion to the fields

Where not the slenderest tassel swings.

Across the wheat flash sky-blue wings;

A goldfinch dangles from a tall,

Full-flowered yellow mullein; all

The world seems turning blue and gold.

Unstartled, since, even from of old,

Beauty has brought keen sense of her,

I feel the withering grasses stir;

Along the edges of the wheat,

I hear the rustle of her feet:

And yet I know the whole sea lies,

And half the earth, between our eyes.

Cornucopia

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 ~ Winter)