Repetita juvant, the old Latin saying goes, that is, “repetition is useful.” We’re seeing just how useful it can be in poetry over at thedVerse Poet’s Pub where I’m hosting today and where we remark over some well-known and less well-known examples using this mantra-like rhetorical technique. Join us!
This Ginkgo Tree
It means more to me than stained glass saints, than incense billows beneath a flying-buttressed roof of a monastery: this ginkgoo tree.
It’s a little boy pausing mid-run to stare away at the autumn blue through crenelated yellow curtains of leaves, shiver joy, arms flung out beneath this ginkgo tree.
It’s a frail old Cistercian monk dark-sweatered on stone steps waiting on a young family after vespers so he can fill the children’s pockets with chocolate in the shadow of this ginkgo tree.
Before October goes the yellow leaves will weave a carpet on which they tread as if it were gold, blessed by the sun’s light, caressed by the wind’s prayers haloed by this ginkgo tree.
Then homeward bound, feeling rich as royalty, we will wonder at the green and gold and birdsong, the afternoons spent, the years rolling by, arriving still with the sun at our backs remembering this ginkgo tree.
Mark Grantham, “Until Tonight” (2019, acrylic on board)
Did you know that the Ginkgo biloba tree can grow up to70-115 feet tall?It has an “angular crown and long, somewhat erratic branches, usually deep rooted and resistant to wind and snow damage. During autumn, the leaves turn bright yellow, then fall, sometimes within a short space of time. They are highly resistant to disease, have insect-resistant wood, and can form aerial roots and sprouts; all of these factors make ginkgos long-lived, with some specimens claimed to be more than 2,500 years old. Ginkgo is known as a “living fossil” because it is recognizably similar to fossils dating back 270 million years.” (via the Arboretum)
Girasoles de van GoghVictor Leclercq, “Madame Leclercq” (1939)
Never mind me
I’m just a category of woman superpowers spent in noon days long surrendered an experimented archetype a brand of supernumerary human like sunflowers in autumn stooped, drooping, ready to fall into a reenacted drama prior to her funeral probably not going anywhere just yet carrying my bags of noodle, tea, my miserly menu to a gardenia-scented parlor of photos
But strangely arrested, composed. You see, I know me, my fully bloomed rich-ass self that’s me rich to just be beyond squiggle of doubt past fake instinctual insincerity unswerved by your bonehead side-eyes.
Don’t be fooled. There’s more to me than you think you see.
I rise, I rise, to life unearned ever received till at last I am received by One whose death and resurrection enacts mine.
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small: For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Kim is our host at dVerse today and writes: It’s Monday and, here at the dVerse Poets Pub, we are writing Prosery, the very short piece of prose or flash fiction that tells a story with a beginning, middle and end. It can be in any genre of your choice, but it does have a limit of 144 words; an additional challenge is to hit 144 exactly. The special thing about Prosery is that we give you a complete line or two from a poem, which must be included somewhere in your story, within the 144-word limit… I have chosen the following lines [from Rimbaud’s “Novel”] to include in your prose: “There you can see a very small patch/Of dark blue, framed by a little branch,/Pinned up by a naughty star.”Join us!
N.B. My 144-word prosery is dedicated to the more than sixty-four million babies that have been aborted and killed since 1973 in the U.S. alone. Worldwide, humankind continues to sacrifice its children as did our ancestors.
Ana Mendieta, “Body Tracks,” 1974
When the mist rolled in, it was almost as if we were mariners standing on the deck of a windless vessel. But well we knew instead of waves the mist hid pastures and fields, beyond them blue hills milky in the late twilight. Now it was unrelenting gray and would be until the autumn offering had been accepted.
Dafis was his name. Youngest of eight. An auspicious number the druid had said. We knew it was him when our youngest Carys pointed up and cried, “Look there! There you can see a very small patch of dark blue, framed by a little branch, pinned up by a naughty star.”
Suddenly the future looked bright, the next autumn’s harvest as fruitful as this one would be once the gray cleared. There’d be no future for Carys. Naught but a naughty star to strangle our sleep.
Shay at Word Garden Word List–“The Silent Patient” prompts us with a list of twenty words (to choose at least three) of which I chose: “chilly,” “darkness,” “dazzling,” “jagged,” “siren,” “suit,” and “vacant.” At dVerse Poetics, Merril challenges us to “take the themes of harvest or haunted literally or use them metaphorically in any way you wish. Harvest grain, organs, fish, or emotions; imagine the grim reaper. Write about something that haunts you, regret, a long-ago love, thoughts of someone who has died, or actual ghosts. Explore a haunted harvest.” Join us!
Samuel Palmer – The Harvest Moon– circa 1833 – Oil on paper, laid on panel
The snail on the thorn The wanderer in the bee-loud glade The rags on the bones of a royal people Who were not a people Until the heavens opened The dove came down The voice spoke delight And the Son was lifted up.
These people, these people! At the harvest, the wheat from the chaff! Who can understand?
Without understanding, who can understand?
Whereof the faith?
Without belief, who can believe?
Others stand taller, taller than the Trees in the garden of Eden Touch the clouds, span the breadth Of the world, their branches heavy In the autumnal twilight!
Yet all felled in one moment, breath denied Darkness descends as a chilled shroud over vacant eyes. Then, oh then! That undiscovered country They must walk alone While the Watchers watch
You like Dante, or Count Ugolino, Caught into the dazzling Light or devouring Pit Where on its jagged slopes skeletal bodies
Slump into suits, vultures after all Though they soared to the siren skies Over Bangalore, Hong Kong, Brussels, D.C.
Where now the cedars of Lebanon? O Kyiv! O Jerusalem! O Gaza! Khartoum! Sanaa! Africa!
Now they sit bleary-eyed in the mist While it rains and rains in the freeze And the mud and the dead coagulate In the graves and the eternally bare trees.
Click on the above imagesby artist Franz Sedlacek (1891-1945): Ghosts on a Tree, 1933, oil on canvas, Albertina Museum, Vienna.
Ezekiel 33:6-9, 31-33 But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand. … Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. … And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it; for with lustful talk in their mouths they act; their heart is set on their gain. And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. When this comes–and come it will!–then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”
1 Peter 2:6-10 For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Gospel of Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” …Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
“Radhika’s fierce quest for justice, enhanced by the author’s brilliant character sketching and nuanced worldbuilding, enliven this tale.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
Get a head start on your Halloween reading with this gothic mystery novel with something of a twist: a vampire accused of murder. In agreeing to represent this unexpected client, newly minted lawyer and daughter of Indian immigrants, Miss Radhika Dhingra knows something about the uneven playing field he’s up against. But she’s about to find out just how much in a world where vampires are considered sub-human and relegated to the underclass.
While defending her client, Radhika has to determine whether he is responsible for the barbarous killing of the star of the local opera house. And if not, who is? And why?
The novel is set in late nineteenth-century New York state and debut author Greyling creates a world teeming with drama as tensions flare between the accused vampire, Mr. Evelyn More, and a society more than ready to condemn him. Meanwhile, will the growing friendship between Radhika and her client cloud her judgment?
The players in this gothic whodunit are (among others) a wealthy matriarch and her family whose ties to Mr. More extend back centuries; Radhika’s friend and journalist, Jane; the murdered woman’s fiancé; and a police detective who sees more than he reveals.
Let sleeping time lie forgotten in the quiet of falling shadows.
Don’t awaken it!
Let it dream pheasants fluttering in the underbrush of tomorrow’s hunt. Or a game of hide and seek where forgotten joys unmixed with sadness are dug up like phantom bones beneath a covering vine.
Or if you do, feed it biscuits of poetry, let it scent each season’s passing, invite you to grasp the sunlight of new days like it snaps yellow butter from your hands
teaching curiosities of the moment, generosities of let be and let alone, of racing and doubling back, of run and wag and look back, of jumps, sloppy licks, demanding barks, yelps of scare and leap at wasps, charging at grackles and stars and fallen leaves, up and down the same walnut-dotted paths
and in its abandon loses itself in the eternity of love mirrored in your eyes and in creation.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV) He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Written in response to Shay's Word Garden Word List: "Autumn" where we pick at least three of the twenty words given, Sumana's What's Going On? prompt: "March of Time" where we're asked to "capture Time's gait in your lines."
I want to understand your euphoric glee before it ends in wine turned vinegar
because I know you: the moods that turn sour, the black holes of emotion
first, melting, then atomic: that is, atomizing into shards of baked madness
without the glue of perspective: falling off a cliff without being arrested by any number of regrets
for the fraying bonds of affection: in the name of freedom locked into flight.
Reflecting on endings, Kim at dVerse Poetics asks us to select one of eight types of endings (from the fifty suggested by Emily Skaja at Literary Hub) for our poems as well as write on the theme of endings. She provides a smorgasbord of examples from which I found myself gravitating towards Eliot’s “punchline” ending in “The Hollow Men” for the simple reason that its punch is such as to be unforgettable. As to the kind of ending I chose to write on, I was inspired by James R. Wood’s essay in Plough Magazine: “The Autonomy Trap.”
Also, thanks to Shay for this week’s inspired Word Garden Word List from which we choose at least three of the twenty words given.
We’re at the dVerse Poet’s Pub where I’m hosting Quadrille #208: “Undead to the World.” A quadrille is a 44-word poem including a given word. This week the word is “vampire.”Join us!
The Election
In the heat of the battle vampire-thirst sucks dry reason—
courteous masks dissolve, burn ash-gray in blazing daylight—
slick the tongue, the teeth that pierce the pale fruit of discord—
Here’s a claw, a tooth, a nail— the Beast of the feast is here.
“Late and Soon”1
Oh, for that serenity obtained now in the gilded twilight of memory
when prayers whispered within doors (as before a vampire’s wakening) flew bat-like in the darkening!
Prayerless, we are prey to blood-shot eyes which unmoor faith from faith to the soul’s endless decay.
1“The world is too much with us; late and soon,/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—”William Wordworth
Carl Gustav Carus, Gothic Windows in the Ruins of the Monastery at Oybin (ca. 1828)
Attention
Of that gift twin sides I see: One real, the other false —
One courses with heart-blood of sacrifice The other, vampire-fashion, bleeds dry.
One’s attention enlivens The other’s consumes.
Thine alone, loving Father, once Received, can in turn dispense Attentive fullness, free of deceit.
Written while meditating on French philosopher Simone Weil’s statement: “We confer upon objects and upon persons around us all that we have of the fullness of reality when to this intellectual attention we add that attention of still higher degree which is acceptance, consent, love” (Intimations of Christianity).
Rights of the dead? It’s more than playing on a pun in introducing this debut mystery novel which features vampires. Its protagonist, a young female lawyer and daughter of Indian immigrants, grapples with whether people considered sub-human and an underclass have access to civil and judicial rights in the same way as their more “normal” peers. Societal tensions mirroring today’s world abound and are explored with sensitivity and passion.
Just a heads up that I’ll be on vacation for the next few weeks and won’t be blogging much, if at all.
In the meantime, did you know? A coffee shop in Singapore invented the “Sweet Little Rain.” This coffee or tea is served with a puff of cotton candy. The steam from the coffee rises to dissolve the cotton candy, and the puff begins to “rain” onto the coffee cup. The ingenuity of it!
Here’s wishing you a “sweet little rain” 🌦️ if only in spirit until I return.
~~ Dora 💖😊
Hosea 10:12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
What God sees every day I can’t see thumbing screens, news clips, photographs between reflections in your eyes black and white print threading worlds in words.
***
What God sees every day I feel when I breathe the deep honey of His Word’s sweet aroma awakening every pore of life new-found in Him.
***
Let me marvel at what I can’t see so I can marvel at what I do when time stops, heaven rips wide, and angel wings are a bird’s wings and mine.
Image Credits: (Top Image) Wildlife photographerDick van Duijn spent two hours snapping over 200 shots to capture the precise moment a squirrel stopped to smell a yellow daisy. (Bottom image) It took six years, 4,200 hours, and 720,000 photos for wildlife photographer Alan McFadyen to capture this perfect shot of a kingfisher diving into the water, a tribute to his late grandfather.
Sumana at What’s Going On? introduces us to a cameo, which is a verse form with a seven line syllable count, unrhymed poem invented by English poet Alice Spokes. It has 2-5-8-3-8-7-2 syllables per line, for a total of 35 syllables. Sumana invites us to write a cameo in theme with the option of using the verse form as well.
Come to the house of mourning You will see me there In the darkening shadows Of sighing halls and stairs. Candles brighten doorways Never flicker strong Though many people enter And some may call it home.
Come to the house of mourning You will see her there The woman crying softly On trembling floors of doubt. At times she lies there prostrate As faith turns into dust Till someone comes beside her And lifts her in their arms.
Come to the house of mourning You will see him there The man who once was laughing But now is quiet as stone. He falls against the pillar Unsteady with despair Till someone reaches for him And helps him soldier on.
Come to the house of mourning You will see them there The children missing parents Parents with empty arms. Yesterdays still haunt them Wife, husband, dearest friend Suffering bars their freedom Hope lives feebly there.
Come to the house of mourning Solace to give and find The whispered hallelujahs Mixed with sadness and with grace. Brightened eyes are tear-filled And time goes trickling slow But come to the house of mourning You will see Jesus there.
Romans 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Ecclesiastes 7:2 It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.
Revelation 21:4 “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Revised from an earlier version of February 2017; for Punam's dVerse Poetics: Picking up the pieces
Grace at dVerse’s Meet the Bar challenges us with a new poetic form, the ballata, new to me anyway, but this Italian form has been around since the Middle Ages. As she tells us, it’s “categorized as having no set meter. However during the period from which these verse forms emerged, quantitative or syllabic meters were most often present in the verse of the dominant Occitan meter which was hexasyllabic (6 syllable) lines and the dominant Italian meter which was the heptasyllabic (7 syllable) lines with the primary accent on the 6th syllable.”
I’ve chosen to do the latter. The structure of the ballata is first stanza, 5 lines, the following stanzas, 4 lines. The rhyme scheme is AbbaA bbaA bbaA, etc., with A being a repeated refrain. Only two rhymes (a, b) can be used.
Mary at “What’s Going On? provides me with the topic, “Changing Times” — so appropriate given the historic, turbulent times we live in — based on Bob Dylan’s “Times They are a Changin’.”These lines from the song stood out for me:
If your time to you is worth savin’ And you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’
from “Times They are a Changin'”
“Looking Time,” Victor Brauner, (Romanian, 1903-1966)
Time in the Eye of the Beholder
“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
1 Corinthians 15:52, KJV
“Child asleep with the cat,” Alix Ayme (Hanoi, ca. 1935).
To sink like a stone, slumbrous a child cocooned in color cats in dreams to discover time swimming in streams lustrous to sink like a stone, slumbrous.
Antonio Berni (Argentinian), “Juanito the Scavenger,” 1978 Oil, bonded fabrics, tin cans, papier mâché, burlap, canvas shoes, rubber, plastic, metals, wire, cord, nails and staples on wood 63 x 41.3 in
This world’s chaos and horror no reprieve will it offer till time, time itself undoes to sink like a stone, slumbrous.
“Sundown,” Ton Dubbeldam (Dutch pointillist painter, 2021)
Then to awake in wonder to eternity’s splendor time drowning in tides glorious to sink like a stone, slumbrous.
Gustave Doré, “Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, The Beatific Vision” (1880)
Time and change now asunder God’s delights we’ll uncover death and sin left behind us to sink like a stone, slumbrous.
When once our heav’nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir’d with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.
Christ with the Crown of Thorns (detail) by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder (attributed to)
It’s the brooms you keep in the corner of your rooms
furious to muck out every stain of sin — like you could
with a pencil and eraser in your accounts book —
except your own: you, an annoyed “bitch goddess” pulling out the
Hoover of good deeds, elegant acts of kindness, politely seen
a proper sadness against the music of the spheres, music you can’t face
unhinged to think you can escape on your brooms, your soul a hostage
to your sins. I’m not lying, friend. We’ll pull our parkas on but it’ll
be a cold night in hell before you escape with the last penny you can’t pay.
Maybe take the loss: the Lamb of God slain to remove your stains, bring you home again.
For Shay's Word Garden Word List (based on Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?) where we use at least three of the twenty words given. The ones used here are: bitch goddess, brooms, elegant, furious, hostage, music parkas, pencil, politely, sadness, & unhinged.
Given my limited experience with horses, my first time riding one was bound to be emblazoned like a star in my memory. It was in the Smoky Mountains in the middle of an already hot summer morning. I was about eleven years old. There was a horse-riding stable offering to take visitors up mountainside trails and I couldn’t say no to that.
Written for dVerse Poeticswhere I’m hosting today and the topic is “Running with Horses.” Join us!
She was a huge chestnut mare not the pony I had hoped for
her great dark eyes as restless as her tail, a lightning flick of impatience.
Before my childish fantasy could die, silly and shrunken, at her indifference
(where was the nuzzle of affection? where the whinny of welcome?)
I was hiked up unceremoniously on her back clutching at the saddle horn and then the reins.
The sixty pounds that was me felt negligible from that height, as if I were on a mini-
mountain broken off to form a mass of muscles, a bundle of pungent scent, mane, and supple neck,
her head rearing back before making her peace with her midget passenger, breathless and flushed.
I was the shadow to her substance, my rapid breaths outpacing her steady heartbeats and hoofs
until relaxing at her lithe sure-footedness up the mountain trail following the lead horse, I managed to look beyond her ears
to the vista spreading below me on one side, steep and curving past clutching scrub and tree, an ungainly
path for the two-footed, but just right for a four-footed mare in the providential scheme of things. And all was right
in the blue-throated sky singing as the birds swept overhead until the ground gave way suddenly as loose rocks clattered
down the steep incline and the mare hastened to regain her step as half the earth lurched sideways
then steadied in one swift leap forward — and I knew, I knew, this mare on whose back I rested as a shadow
upon the dark earth, knew me for her charge, as an angel knows her wings spread over a child uncertain in the dark.
Written for Sherry’s What’s Going On? where Sherry asks us to write an elegyafter providing us with some sterling examples and Sadje’s What Do You See photo prompt where we are given the photo below to use as inspiration for a story, poem, or a caption.Join us!
After you died, I wondered at you, bitter and stiff to the end not a pot of dirt in your will for your son the one you took for granted the one who left you for a brown girl from a foreign land.
What will they excavate next, now that they’ve unearthed Richard III’s remains from beneath a parking lot in Leicester –
toxic Richard, or was he merely maliciously maligned by the winners of history’s roulette, indited by black-robed Thomas More after a day spent
torturing yet another Bible smuggler in the cellar before he himself, sparing his beard and his speech – “Qui tacet consentit”1 – was dispatched by a fickle king,
entering the cities of the dead, layer upon layer, ceremony upon ceremony, bells rung for the noble, sand and rubble over the commoner, layers
of gold and blood in the mix of ashen faces forgotten in the hasty gallop of time over airy constructs of humanity’s vanities.
Alma Thomas, Light Blue Nursery (1968), acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Weave now:
blue for sky red for rose white for lightning green for grass orange for sun black for midnight and the grackles
that perch on the baked earth to cheat death after the last political goose has been cooked
and the last motors of industry grind to a natural halt and the dust of tigers and shells mingle with the bones of emperors
in an oven of fire – the end of history – not near-sighted Fukuyama’s – but justice served at last, and mercy
for those who evaded history’s gambles to be sought and found by grace: Love so amazing, so divine.
1The maxim is “Qui tacet consentit”: the maxim of the law is “Silence gives consent.” If therefore you wish to construe what my silence betokened, you must construe that I consented. (Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons).
Image credit: Alma Thomas, Light Blue Nursery (1968), acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Shay's Word Garden Word List asks us to choose at least three of twenty given words from Richard Wilbur's "Collected Poems" and Melissa's dVerse: Poetics prompt asks us to choose one of selected artworks by Alma Thomas for poetic inspiration.
These friends I have that hold my hand unseen do speak to listening ears through ancient word to quell my fears.
They tell of One who is, who was, and is to come Friend immortal that to their hearts by Spirit’s breath each word imparts.
Heart-wise we talk of Him as much as I to them in friendship go finding the Way sought in these living words — the very breath of Him — in wisdom to rehearse.
This Friend of theirs now holds my hand unseen — His, nail-scarred — mine, to trace what he endured to me embrace.
These friends I’ll see in eternity’s Dawn transfigured as I in our Friend’s company with Him to dwell our joy unmatched His love unearned to tell.
Girl and Irises, Hashimoto Okiie, 1952
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the [people] of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. 1 Timothy 1:17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Regarding the Vincent Van Gogh painting: Vincent responded to one of his brother Theo’s letters encouraging him to use more colour by sending him a still life featuring an off-white Bible against a black backdrop, with a vibrant yellow-brown foreground and lemon-yellow highlights. He made this painting in a single day!(The small book pictured below it is Émile Zola’s La joie de vivre, Vincent’s favorite novel.1)
Written for Laura's MTB: "It Begins to Dawn" where are writing in the poetry style of The A L'Arora, a form created by Laura Lamarca: • 4 stanzas (or more) • 8-lines per stanza (can split with line break after 6) • a, b, c, d, e, F g, F rhyme scheme • no syllable count per line Since L'Arora is Italian for "dawn," she encourages us to use it in some fashion as noun or verb in our poems. Also written for Susan's What's Going On? where the theme is "Friendship." and gives us many poetic examples as inspiration. Join us!
Dreams from a Pilgrimage 
