rebirth

Posted on January 30, 2023 by sarahwbartlett

There are times when a confluence of events, feelings, opportunity and phrases conspire to connect, perhaps in conversation to create an entirely new form of expression or possibility. This has happened to me while working with a piece of stone. It has happened when a poem comes full-blown to the page. And sometimes, as recently, it happens unbidden. Starts as a niggle at the edge of consciousness. Morphs about inside, noting and absorbing layers and dimensions. Spillls onto the page this way, then that. Finally challenges me to approach it intentionally. As, in the case of the brief poem below, even experimentally.

I welcome your comments and observations, curious what you glean from the words, their arrangement, any possible resonance for you personally. And thank you for reading.

                     REBIRTH 
                        AT THE NEW MOON
                            for DC

              This harbinger			
			this black zero of beginning
               releases hope				
			hollow, hungering
        to expand, to deepen
			to become full. The new wanting
      to bid old ways goodbye
			beckons to push through
      a second chance to fill
			this opening.


        Start close up, sense
			the gift of a new phase
         a whisper undiscerned
			on the dawn’s breeze,
                 a seed in you
			waiting to spread against a future sky
become visible while carrying
			the light within
          your gift to others
			It is early, and about to grow.


This is my first experiment with a double-poem-that-makes-a-third. 'At the New Moon' is 'found' from Marge Piercy's ‘Head of the Year.' 'Rebirth' celebrates a turning in DC's life.

balancing need

Posted on February 25, 2013 by sarahwbartlett

Credit: magnitudemedia

Surrounded by abundance sometimes
I forget to balance my own needs
with all the others that move in
and around my just-full-enough life

wrapping their tendrils around fragile
lessons learned through lean and bend
or occasional SNAP! of the too-long held
whose growing time is passed, yet clings

as if tenacity might bring renewed growth
to the vine yet instead, crowds out
young energy sprawling itself greenly
into tomorrow. Today it’s balance I want

to re-member as I mold my pieces together —
old, new, not-yet-become or even imagined . . .
How one plucked blossom emerges again
and again into ongoing abundance, season

upon season! Love is like that. Balance, too.
The more we practice, the easier it becomes.
The more we have, the more there is.
The more we give, the more we get.

I strive to recall the simplicity of this knowing
that balance is a practice like writing, love –
not a cancellation of one extreme
for the other. No erasure, just active paradox

reaching a shared sense of purpose,
achieved with intention and focus
looping and turning to create a whole
of otherwise disparate parts.

With time.
With practice.
With patience.
Balance.

swb
2-25-13

challenge accepted!

Status

Thanks to April’s Platform Challenge (by Robert Lee Brewer) — which pushed me and 100’s of other aspiring-to-experienced writers of all stripes into cyber space in search of personal meaning and intentional connection — I pause gratefully to consider creating a posting schedule.

I spend my time planning prompts and agendas for writing groups; and writing about life through nature’s lens. And presto! there’s my proposed plan. Weekend posts – personal reflections; mid-week posts – more ‘writerly’ notes.

Because I cannot resist being corny, I’ll call the weekend posts “Sunday Sarahnades”; the mid-week ones, “Wednesday Working Words.” Like me, this blog is a work in progress. Expect change — hope for growth!