James Crews is a poet who teaches Poetry at the University at Albany and lives on a organic farm with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Each Friday he posts a poem, sometimes one of his own that serves as more than just some mere Poetry Prompt. He recently posted this: I’ve been sitting with this very short but very powerful poem by Jane Hirshfield ever since a dear friend passed it along to me earlier in the week. It speaks to the season so many of us might find ourselves inhabiting, not only that of autumn, but a moment of loss and transition during which we’re asked to accept such changes as necessary, and perhaps even sacred. In this poem, she invites us to see each shedding tree as an icon, “thinned/back to bare wood,/without diminishment.” And there is almost a haiku-like quality to those final three lines that urges us toward deeper contemplation of the richness inherent in these wooden beings. Perhaps what we see as loss and a kind of death each year as fall comes is really just wind and weather having worshipped the trees so much they are returned to their basic essence. In this way, we might reframe any difficult season when we are worn back to our essential selves as holy, worthy of worship for the way such trying times allow us to become something new.
Autumn
by Jane Hirshfield
Again the wind
flakes gold-leaf from the trees
and the painting darkens—
as if a thousand penitents
kissed an icon
till it thinned
back to bare wood,
without diminishment.Invitation for Writing & Reflection: How might you reframe a difficult season in your own life as sacred or holy, seeing how you were worn back to the truest version of yourself even while in pain?
It prompted me to write in kind:
FALLING
And just like that
Summer fell
into a colorfully crisp confetti
of blazenous colors
that never reached the ground
Flutterings
into what can’t always be planted
but never fails to be garnered in
whatsoeversthat find us all
softly soaringly sheltered
in a cooling uplifting Breath
A heavenly satisfied SighMay this Fall Season bring you lots of
Oooooh and A W E
Paint Your Picture
It’s one thing to paint a
M A S T E R P I E C E
. . .And it’s quite another to just realize
YOU are a MASTERPIECE
John Bramblitt
went blind and only then began to really see. . .amazing that he felt going blind was actually the BEGINNING, the Prerequisite of him becoming an artist?
Have you ever gotten the feeling that there just might be something else you no way, no how, ever can do?
John Bramblitt is a blind artist from Texas who not only had sight, but is now blind, but
NOW AN ARTIST WHEN HE ONCE WAS NONE!
John paints the most amazing, colorful paintings–and he can’t see them, but to paint them he just doesn’t
i m a g i n e
he actually feels them and maybe best of all. . .
makes you experience them!
Obviously the inspirational point is apparent. . .
or. . .or is it?
Need we become so blind to
g e t i t ?
Y O U
are the Masterpiece the YOU need to BE
Y O U
are the Masterpiece the World needs to SEE
Y O U
are the Masterpiece that needs set Free
S E E, B E, F R E E
that magnificent Masterpiece in you
(o f t e n)
Get SHARED
The World is your Canvas. . .
waiting for your
C O L O R S
Deprive your Audience no longer!