A poetry "egg hunt"
I’m sharing three spring/Easterish poems. I often write about reading slowly and noticing what shimmers, sparkles, or seems to be highlighted as you read.
Tonight, take notice of those things, but also think of it like the Easter egg hunts you may have seen this weekend. Can you capture that energy of excitement, exploration, joy, and surprise when a word, line, idea, or invitation is found as you read the following poems?
The Word Hunt
Some shimmers or sparkles to find in this “poetry hunt.”
What verb (action word) catches your attention?
Do you notice a verb in each poem? What your life whispering to through the action words you notice?
Is there an adjective (descriptive word) that seems to shimmer or sparkle?
Can you find an adjective in each poem? How do they relate or “talk” with each other?
What phrase sparks a question?
Is there a phrase that makes you uncomfortable?
What phrase captures the feeling/question/direction of your life right now?
What word feels challenging?
What word feels like an invitation?
The “Golden Egg”
(The golden egg is the one special egg with an extra prize at some egg hunts.)
This golden egg is YOUR invitation to look at your collection of words, phrases, ideas, ponderings, and USE them. This is your permission to spend a few minutes being playfully creative with the words and phrases you found on your poetry hunt.
Can you let one of the words be an inspiration for your own poem? Maybe it’s a drawing or a dance. It could be just writing the words in a list and seeing how you notice the events of your life differently because of the poetry words you’ve collected.
And now, it’s your turn to collect what shimmers, sparkles, and shines!
The Peace of Wild Things
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.
A Circle of Seasons (From Betty’s Diner: The Musical)
by Carrie Newcomer
VII.
A new spring enters,
The keeper of a promise,
The season that always returns.
She carries in her basket
Wildflowers and strawberries,
This year’s fruit
From last year’s seeds.
Yes, there are questions,
And occasionally answers,
The simple ones,
The most important ones,
That cannot be approached
Or even seen,
Until we go out looking
For something else entirely,
Following the hunch to it’s natural end.
Only then can we return
To where we began,
Grateful and humbled
By what the world has poured in,
And all that we have poured out,
Yes, friends,
A new life is beginning.
And is taking up exactly
Where the old life left off.
Camas Lilies
By Lynn Ungar
Consider the liles of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers’ hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you—what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down—
papers, plans, appointments, everything—
leaving only a note: “Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I’m through with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
I love this! These words sparkle for me: “Gone to the fields to be lovely. Be back when I’m through with blooming.”
Some of my favorite poetry and poets (lyricists). Thank you Amy and Happy Easter.