Family | The Vibrant Channeled Creator

Definition #93 Wet Nest

14 Jan 2015 Leave a comment

by jeannepoland in Family Tags: can't manage to have any babies, definition, gaggle of geese, geese, the pleasure of spring, wet nest

Geese Hatching

Geese

by Faith Shearin

A gaggle of geese return to our street each winter
while migrating from one place to another.
They arrive in January, around my husband’s birthday,

and I am surprised to find them behind our house,
honking like cab drivers in traffic. Most leave with
babies but one pair can’t manage to have any;

I’ve watched them sit for years on a wet nest of death,
warming unhappiness. It is only when the other
geese swim past them, proudly displaying

a line of live chicks, that they realize they have
failed again, their eggs silent beneath the love
of their feathers. My neighbors and I don’t agree

on much but we all watch these geese from our
windows, with binoculars sometimes, our breakfast
growing cold on the table. We wish the unsuccessful

ones would have a season of luck, their eggs healthy
and well placed, for each of us has known the pleasure
of spring, the way it feels for something closed

Definition #92 Ecstasy

13 Jan 2015 Leave a comment

by jeannepoland in Family Tags: a sheet of flame, alive, David Schultz, ecstasy, in a stricken field, Jack London, moonlight, paradox of living, summit of life, the artist out of himself, The Call of the Wild, the old wolf cry

From Jack London
In The Call of the Wild, he wrote:

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise.

And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame;

it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter;

and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.

Definition #91 Loss

12 Jan 2015 4 Comments

by jeannepoland in Family Tags: Airport stole my coat, Airport stole my meds, Albany NY, definition, empty caddy, freezing fingers, frozen legs, hoarfrost snow ice, loss, nutrients, Sedona Az, six AM, six PM

Sedona AZ Sunrise
Jan 6, 2015

Six AM dawns empty;

Airport stole my meds…empty

caddy…nutrients.

Home to Albany, NY
hoarfrost, snow and ice
Jan 11, 2015

Six PM welcome;

Airport stole my coat…freezing

fingers…frozen legs.

Definition #90 Poetry

10 Jan 2015 Leave a comment

by jeannepoland in Family Tags: a desire to be good, Dorianne Laux, feels as it thinks, poetry, simply slow down, talking to myself

“I love poetry that feels as it thinks.” That’s Dorianne Laux, born in Augusta, Maine (1952)

She grew up poor in San Diego, barely making it through school. Her stepfather abused her throughout her childhood and teenage years, and through it all she wrote poems. She said: “I wouldn’t have gotten through that without a friend. If I hadn’t been able to talk with myself, with respect, as a whole human being, who had a mind and heart and desires, a goodness, a desire to be good — you know, all of those things,

She didn’t think she would ever make a living from poetry, but she started giving readings and publishing poems, and published her first book, Awake (1990). She said: “You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. That was not something I thought would ever happen.” She wrote four more books of poetry, including What We Carry (1994) and The Book of Men (2011).

And, “Any good poem is asking you simply to slow down.”