Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Forgiveness

 

“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.”— Oscar Wilde

SOURCE

“I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It’s a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s an evolution of the heart.”— Sue Monk Kidd

Midweek Motif ~ Forgiveness

Sorry is the best word to earn happiness and peace if we are the wrong doer. What if when we are the victim? Is it easy to say, ‘to err is human, to forgive divine?’ Is forgiving someone our weakness or strength? Has the word ever posed any challenge in your life?

We are all ears.

Well, let me tell you secretly my heart sincerely yearns for the nemesis of political crooks.

Here are some Forgiveness poems for you:

He Strained My Faith

by Emily Dickinson

He strained my faith —
Did he find it supple?
Shook my strong trust —
Did it then — yield?

Hurled my belief —
But — did he shatter — it?
Racked — with suspense —
Not a nerve failed!

Wrung me — with Anguish —
But I never doubted him —
‘Tho’ for what wrong
He did never say —

Stabbed — while I sued
His sweet forgiveness —
Jesus — it’s your little “John”!
Don’t you know — me?

a total stranger one black day

by E.E. Cummings

a total stranger one black day

knocked living the hell out of me--

who found forgiveness hard because

my(as it happened)self he was

-but now that fiend and i are such

Immortal friend the other’s each

Do Not Be Ashamed

by Wendell Berry

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness,
and they will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
“I am not ashamed.” A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will rise
in his evening flight from the hilltop.

The Rest

by Margaret Atwood

The rest of us watch from beyond the fence
as the woman moves with her jagged stride
into her pain as if into a slow race.
We see her body in motion
but hear no sounds, or we hear
sounds but no language; or we know
it is not a language we know
yet. We can see her clearly
but for her it is running in black smoke.
The cluster of cells in her swelling
like porridge boiling, and bursting,
like grapes, we think. Or we think of
explosions in mud; but we know nothing.
All around us the trees
and the grasses light up with forgiveness,
so green and at this time
of the year healthy.
We would like to call something
out to her. Some form of cheering.
There is pain but no arrival at anything.

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

(Next week Sanaa’s Midweek Motif will be ~ A Million Years Howl When Voices Whisper Among The Trees )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Biodiversity

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

--Eden Phillpotts

“Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.”
  ― Albert Einstein 

source

 Definition From Wikipedia: "Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life. This can refer to genetic variation, species variation, or ecosystem variation within an area, biome, or planet."

General meaning of biodiversity

🌲 

Midweek Motif ~ Biodiversity

Today I am trying to wrap my mind around the diversity of life.  How do we fit into the family of life on our home planet?  

Here's one viewpoint: 

 “The extraordinary thing we now know, thanks to Crick and Watson’s discovery of DNA and the decoding of the human and other genomes, is that all life, everything, all the three million species of life and plant life—all have the same source. We all come from a single source."

―Jonathan Sacks in Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise

Your Challenge:  In a new poem bring us a little way into one aspect of biodiversity, helping to make visible our part in the whole.

How farmers produce biodiversity.

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.

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd

By Walt Whitman

 

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,

Whispering, I love you, before long I die,

I have travell’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,

For I could not die till I once look’d on you,

For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,

Return in peace to the ocean my love,

I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much separated,

Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!

But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,

As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;

Be not impatient – a little space – know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land,

Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love.

 Book of Hours II, 16 

By Rainer Maria Rilke

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing –
each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly. 

🌳 

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 ~ Gift.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Doorway(s)

The Open Door by Helen McNicoll (@1910)

🚪

“How concrete everything becomes in the world of the spirit when an object, 

a mere door, can give images of hesitation, temptation, 

desire, security, welcome and respect.” 

― Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

“. . . I have always taken that as a general rule of life: If a door opens,

walk on through  and at least take a look around.” 

― Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God

Rock of Cashel, Ireland, Photo by Digital Eye

🚪

Midweek Motif ~ Doorway(s)

"Women lean on doorways!

Are they waiting, hesitating, 

or holding up the world?"  

I wrote those lines in a "Women's Movement" poem at least 35 years ago.  I can't find the poem, but the image sticks with me as a place where two worlds meet, a place that is neither the kitchen nor the board room ~ a place where choice is possible.

"Door" is also the deepest root meaning of January:

 January (in Latin, Ianuarius) is named after the Latin word for door (ianua), since January is the door to the year and an opening to new beginnings. The month is conventionally thought of as being named after Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in Roman mythology, but according to ancient Roman farmers' almanacs Juno was the tutelary deity of the month.

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem with a doorway motif, one with doors open or closed.

Photo of Cape Coast Castle's 'Door of No Return"

Rotation

BY NATASHA TRETHEWEY

Like the moon that night, my father —

         a distant body, white and luminous.

How small I was back then,

         looking up as if from dark earth.

Distant, his body white and luminous, 

         my father stood in the doorway.

Looking up as if from dark earth,

         I saw him outlined in a scrim of light.

My father stood in the doorway

         as if to watch over me as I dreamed.

When I saw him outlined — a scrim of light —

         he was already waning, turning to go.

Once, he watched over me as I dreamed.

         How small I was. Back then, 

he was already turning to go, waning

         like the moon that night — my father.

(from Thrall. Copyright © 2012 by Natasha Trethewey. Used with permission)

Praying

by Mary Oliver

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

Thirst, Beacon Press 2006, 

found at Poem Elf.

From The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald,
illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1920

Doors opening, closing on us

by Marge Piercy, 1936

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But

while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters
. . . . 
(Read the rest HERE.)

They Sit Together on the Porch

BY WENDELL BERRY

They sit together on the porch, the dark 

Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. 

Their supper done with, they have washed and dried 

The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, 

Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. 

She sits with her hands folded in her lap, 

At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, 

And when they speak at last it is to say 

What each one knows the other knows. They have 

One mind between them, now, that finally 

For all its knowing will not exactly know 

Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding 

Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

Still Life with Doorway and Cat Berdichev - Polissya Region - Ukraine

🚪

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

(Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Poetry about the Body)

I Wish I'd Written This

A Poem on Hope

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,

For hope must not depend on feeling good

And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality

Of the future, which surely will surprise us,

…And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction

Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.

The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?

Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit

Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,

The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope

Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge

Of what it is that no other place is, and by

Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this

Place that you belong to though it is not yours,

For it was from the beginning and will be to the end

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are

Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,

Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,

And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike

Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing

In the trees in the silence of the fisherman

And the heron, and the trees that keep the land

They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power

Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful

when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy

when they ask for your land and your work.

Answer with knowledge of the others who are here

And how to be here with them. By this knowledge

Make the sense you need to make. By it stand

In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.

Speak to your fellow humans as your place

Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.

Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it

Before they had heard a radio. Speak

Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up

From the pages of books and from your own heart.

Be still and listen to the voices that belong

To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.

There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,

By which it speaks for itself and no other.

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.

Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground

Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls

Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights

And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.

Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,

Which is the light of imagination. By it you see

The likeness of people in other places to yourself

In your place. It lights invariably the need for care

Toward other people, other creatures, in other places

As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world

Is no better than its places. Its places at last

Are no better than their people while their people

Continue in them. When the people make

Dark the light within them, the world darkens.

            - Wendell Berry

Wikipedia tells us:

'Wendell E. Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.'

There is more about him there, and I learn that he was born in 1934, is a farmer, an environmental and anti-war activist, and a devout Christian who is not afraid to criticise the Christian churches when he perceives them to be failing in Christian ideals. 

An article at Poetry Foundation says that, in any of his genres, 'his message is essentially the same: humans must learn to live in harmony with the natural rhythms of the earth or perish.' However, 'In his opinion, many environmentalists place too much emphasis on wild lands without acknowledging the importance of agriculture to our society. Berry strongly believes that small-scale farming is essential to healthy local economies, and that strong local economies are essential to the survival of the species and the well-being of the planet.'

Clearly he is thoughtful, committed, and lives his beliefs. This poem is sombre in its predictions, but if enough people were to take enough notice, could we change things in time? Some of the online petitions we sign, and the letters we send to our politicians, do get results. I think we must keep on keeping on. Recently I quoted on facebook poet Kerry O'Connor, whose writings many of you know and love, expressing the hope that, ''all will find inspiration to continue to be the voices of the people from all our many corners of the world' – a wonderful reminder of the possibilities of poetry. It's not the only way (nor even the only way for many of us poets) but poetry is OUR way. And Wendell Berry gives us a shining example.

There are lots of books by and about him at Amazon. At Poetry Soup you can find what are said to be his most famous poems; and there is also a collection at PoemHunter.

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.

The photo used here is by Guy Mendes, released under Creative Commons.