Sunday, June 5, 2011

Words to Live By (Poem)

Words to Live By

Don't listen:
no and can't, like weeds
gone unchecked,
deny space
to frisk fertile ground. Open
hands and let seed fall.

*

Put worry
on one thread kept short
and knotted.
Break the chain
beaded with doubt. Spiral yes
from yes into yes.

*

Take your pulse.
Imagine it slowed
enough to
matter. Breathe.
Make offerings of time, make
presence of absence.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
_____________________________

I'm participating in the #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are found here.

This series of poems, in Shadorma form, is my response to the sixth prompt from Jonathan Mead:

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you had one week left to live, would you still  be doing what you're doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve only to do what makes you come alive.

Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual "always something better" spiral?

* * * 

My responses to prompts to date, all in the form of poems, are:





2 comments:

Carol Apple said...

I like this poem a lot. It captures something that's been at the back of my mind lately, and it's always a pleasure when a poem speaks to those half-formed thoughts! The writing prompt chleenge sounds interesting.

Divya said...

Hi I loved this poem very much.. brilliant is the theme and brilliant is the way its been put forward :)