Monday, June 13, 2011

Tend With Care (Poem)

Tend With Care

Your future's
longing to reveal
its self-shaped
form, substance
like clay you ball up, poke, stretch
thin and push around.

Picture this:
At your potter's wheel,
centering
with body
entire, you spin luck's circle,
matching speed with force,

your hands wet,
pulling high, pushing
down, rhythm
a slow build
up to your new creation,
your opening made.

Stilled, hands feel
what coveted forms:
you readied
to add walls
then trim, cut away excess,
reveal you to be.

Now strike flint.
Where you burn inside
is your fire.
Stoke embers,
tend with care heat you apply.
Once burnished, glowing.

© 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 here.

This poem, in Shadorma form (each stanza comprising six lines of no or no set rhyme following a 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllabic pattern), is my response to the 14th prompt from author and entrepreneur Jonathan Fields:

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world buzzes about goals and visions. Focus. Create a vivid picture of exactly where you want to go. Dream big, then don't let anything or anyone stop you. The problem, as Daniel Gilbert wrote in Stumbling Upon Happiness, is that we're horrible at forecasting how we'll really feel 10 years or 20 years from now — once we've gotten what we dreamed of. Often, we get there only to say, "That's not what I thought it would be", and ask, "What now?" Ambition is good. Blind ambition is not. It blocks out not only distraction but the many opportunities that might take you off-course but that may also lead you in a new direction. Consistent daily action is only a virtue when bundled with a willingness to remain open to the unknown. In this exercise, look at your current quest and ask, "What alternative opportunities, interpretations and paths am I not seeing?" They're always there, but you've got to choose to see them.

* * *

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













5 comments:

Hannah Stephenson said...

You truly have mastered the Shadorma--so cool. I also love how the form lets us see the clay being molded.

Reflections said...

Love the feel of your piece, the wet clay molding in ones hands. Gentle pressure forming new designs. Well penned.

S. Etole said...

"Where you burn inside is your fire" ... this is haunting in a way.

thelmaz said...

Lovely. Thanks

Connie said...

Oh, I could spend hours reading here...

Inspired me to try shadorma myself...oh how I hesitated...but there it is...