Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Walk

 

“Your grief path is yours alone, and no one else can walk it, and no one else can understand it”— Terri Irwin

SOURCE

“Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise.”— Tommy Douglas

          Midweek Motif ~ Walk

One can walk in so many ways: walking by faith in God; walking in a space of gratitude. We couldn’t agree more with Nelson Mandela when he says, “There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere.” Buddha tells us to walk safely in the maze of life with the light of wisdom.

So walk is the motif today.

It might be a calorie burning brisk walk or a slow ambling, taking in the sights and sounds around.

What about jaywalking and dancing the moonwalk? Anything connected with walk would do J

I have read in an article that Charles Dickens walked a dozen miles a day and found writing so mentally agitating that he once wrote, "If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish." 

A few poems for inspiration

The Walk

by Thomas Hardy

You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
As in earlier days,
By the gated ways:
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.


I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way:
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence. 

Acquainted With The Night

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Autumn

by T.E. Hulme

A touch of cold in the Autumn night— 

I walked abroad, 

And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge 

Like a red-faced farmer. 

I did not stop to speak, but nodded, 

And round about were the wistful stars 

With white faces like town children.

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

              (Sanaa will be our guest host next week and her Midweek Motif will be Poems To Weather Uncertain Times)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Zero Tolerance

Logo of the Zero Tolerance Policy at Queen Mary University of London Student Union

 🌌

Various countries have laws for zero tolerance of: Using certain pesticides and chemicals, Bullying in the workplace, Dealing Narcotics, Driving while intoxicated, Belonging to gangs, Using weapons and drugs and violence in schools, and increasingly, Discriminating on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and religion in many settings.

And by international agreement since 2012, all countries have zero-tolerance for genital mutilation: 

The International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is February 6, today. 

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Midweek Motif ~ Zero Tolerance

     Zero-Tolerance is controversial, and hard to enforce.  This is not just because one law doesn't fit everyone, but because laws are applied unevenly.  In the USA, biased law enforcement has led to a racist "school to prison pipeline," for example.

     But when Zero Tolerance becomes a law, its job is to prevent future damage.  Changing behaviors by enforcement now is meant to change attitudes over time.   Does this work? Can it work? Should it work?

     Here are 2 personal examples:  

(1) I recently witnessed a speaker at a library event give contact information for female circumcision, and no one objected.  A lady next to me shushed me when I bristled, and said, "We try to tolerate everybody."  Later I asked the Library Director why he allowed it, and he said he hadn't heard it.  People try not to know, I think.  But how can I be shocked when I didn't follow through myself?    

(2) In my high school English classroom, I had zero tolerance for hate speech of any kind.  To enforce it I had to insist students were in MY space, not public space where free speech is legal.  Imagine the debates!  I had to renew the contract with each new group of students. 

Your Challenge:  Take one tiny piece of this vast topic to illuminate in a new poem using your stories, images, experience, wishes, and potential solutions.  Feel free to focus on FGM.  

From "Crisis Communication," a slide share 
by Dr.Arivalan Ramaiyah Director of Praxis Skills Training and Consultancy

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“We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.”  ― Martin Luther King Jr.

 🌌

Goodbye to Tolerance

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits—

you have given the world   

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   

blood donors. Your crumbs

choke me, I would not want

a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   

by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   

falter: irresponsive

to nightmare reality.

It is my brothers, my sisters,

whose blood spurts out and stops

forever

because you choose to believe it is not your business.

Goodbye, goodbye,

your poems

shut their little mouths,   

your loaves grow moldy,   

a gulf has split

                     the ground between us,

and you won’t wave, you’re looking

another way.

We shan’t meet again—

unless you leap it, leaving   

behind you the cherished   

worms of your dispassion,   

your pallid ironies,

your jovial, murderous,   

wry-humored balanced judgment,

leap over, un-

balanced? ... then

how our fanatic tears

would flow and mingle   

for joy ..

Farah Gabdon's poem "Woman"

(The Finnish League for Human Rights, Oct. 2016, Helsinki, Finland.)

Tolerance

By Thomas Hardy

'It is a foolish thing,' said I,

'To bear with such, and pass it by;

Yet so I do, I know not why!'

And at each clash I would surmise

That if I had acted otherwise

I might have saved me many sighs.

But now the only happiness

In looking back that I possess —

Whose lack would leave me comfortless —

Is to remember I refrained

From masteries I might have gained,

And for my tolerance was disdained;

For see, a tomb. And if it were

I had bent and broke, I should not dare

To linger in the shadows there.

 🌌

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 ~ Love. )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Winter

“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus

SOURCE

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structureof the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.” — Andrew Wyeth

         Midweek Motif ~ Winter

Shakespeare says, “Blow, blow, thou winter wind / Thou art not so unkind / As man's ingratitude;”.

What about you? What does the season weave in your head?

In the place where I live winter’s brief entry is most welcome. That nip in the air, its misty breath, the lazy sun, arrival of migratory birds, fragrance of new harvest etc. etc. bring about a strange joy. But this is not so with the cold countries.

How do you look at Winter?

Winter Garden

by Matsuo Basho

Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.

A Winter Bluejay

by Sara Teasdale

Crisply the bright snow whispered, 
Crunching beneath our feet; 
Behind us as we walked along the parkway, 
Our shadows danced, 
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue. 
Across the lake the skaters 
Flew to and fro, 
With sharp turns weaving 
A frail invisible net. 
In ecstacy the earth 
Drank the silver sunlight; 
In ecstacy the skaters 
Drank the wine of speed; 
In ecstacy we laughed 
Drinking the wine of love. 

Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
"Oh look!"
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty? 

The Farm Woman’s Winter

by Thomas Hardy

I

If seasons all were summers, 
And leaves would never fall, 
And hopping casement-comers 
Were foodless not at all, 
And fragile folk might be here 
That white winds bid depart; 
Then one I used to see here 
Would warm my wasted heart!

II

One frail, who, bravely tilling 
Long hours in gripping gusts, 
Was mastered by their chilling, 

And now his ploughshare rusts.
So savage winter catches
The breath of limber things,
And what I love he snatches,
And what I love not, brings. 

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

  

(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Money (for World Savings/Thrift Day).)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Neutrality / Objectivity

"Close examination of unbiased truth"
Painting by William Girometti (Italy, 1979)
Photo Silvia Girometti (via Wikimedia)

“Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles.   Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral."

― Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must
be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV)

The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.” 
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Yellow Emoticon Neutral Face Button
by Granny Enchanted

"The very concept of objective truth 

is fading out of the world. 

Lies will pass into history." 

--George Orwell

World map showing countries' degrees of neutrality prior to 2007:

  neutral countries

  disputed neutral countries

  historical neutral countries

Midweek Motif 
Neutrality / Objectivity

Neutrality and Objectivity are not equivalent, but they share the qualities of being relatively good or bad, possible or impossible and revealing or obscuring truth.  A neutral position is good in a yoga class, but bad in a debate.  Do you agree?

I picked this topic because today is a Celebration of Neutrality in Austria, one of several countries which have adopted a UN Declaration of Neutrality.  But as a member of the European Union, how neutral can and should it be?  

Your Challenge:  Create a new poem that explores one instance of neutrality or objectivity.  Try NOT to be either neutral or objective.

Excerpt from Goodbye to Tolerance

Related Poem Content Details

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits— 

you have given the world   

some choice morsels, 

gobbets of language presented 

as one presents T-bone steak 

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye, 

                            I don’t care 

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes 

are committed in your name. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Neutral Tones 

BY THOMAS HARDY

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
     - They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
     On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
     Like an ominous bird-a-wing...

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
     And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

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

(Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be ~ The Day of the Dead.)