Another poem that just popped out one day

[Katrin Oddleifson Robertson]

Growing Toward Fifty

You make me want to dance, little seed.
Dance your round, rolling, wholeness
Laying in the palm of my hand.
Dance your courage, reaching unannounced,
Into moist, dark soil.
Dance your color - coiled brightness
Waiting patiently within softening walls -
And leap with your unfurling.

I will dance with you, tiny seed
And move to the music of your calling,
“I am ready for the planting.”

[Skip Zilla]

Hi Katie,

Good to see a home-made poem--and a good one! (BTW, I wiped all mine out of this group months ago because I felt like a one-pony show all by my lonesome. So, if you and others promise to present your creative work here, I'll do my best to add to the home-made collection.)

Your poem jogged my memory of one by e. e. cummings, titled "love is a place."

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

Thanks for causing a little dancing in me, too.

[ddeubel]

Katie,

That poem has nice tension and contrast dance/plant..... says something for sure..

The title of this group made me think of an Irving Layton poem about him running into a store and demanding a pencil and paper because he just had to get a poem down ...... that poem was his lovely poem "The Swimmer" but I liked just as well his poem about the birth of that poem and this bedraggled guy running into a pharmacy demanding a pencil and paper....

I'll share the only poem I ever wrote that I actually MEMORIZED. It sits in my head and pops out from time to time. Solid as rock, hasn't moved for 20 years. I can't even remember my apt # but I remember this one...

All that I love
like all that I know
just a handful of daisies
picked before fall's first snow.

Little matters, matter little.
Desire the authentic, unanswered riddle.

Cheers,

David

[Katrin Oddleifson Robertson]

Oh, I love that poem and the image of a person demanding a pencil and paper to get a poem down. I also love the urgency of creativity sometimes. How it has a vision of its own, insisting that we stop whatever we are doing and pay attention to what it has to say.

By the way, I did not mean to start a group! I was actually trying to post a poem on sometimes poets, but I would love to talk to anyone who is interested in talking about the nature of creativity...

[Katrin Oddleifson Robertson]

Hi Skip,

Thanks for your reply - I have not had any poems to post these days. The poet that rents space in my mind is a rather unpredictable creature; she tends to come rushing into my thoughts, unannounced and not caring that she is interrupting something "really important", deposits a poem, and then exits as quickly as she swept in. I never know when to expect her....rude isn't it! I love it when she visits, though, and perhaps if I made my mind more hospitable and comfortable, and cleaned up all the to-do lists, academic books, calendars and car-pool schedules that clutter up my imagination, she would find a place to sit down and stay a while. I will work on that and do my best to post what she gives me.

Thanks for the EE Cummings poem -loved it.

[Connie Weber]

What a relief to see a poetry forum springing up. an oasis. Whew---sometimes I think the site gets into all too much thinking and not enough expressing, being in creative mode.

If you'll forgive me for not being as refined as all of you, I'm wondering if it's ok to even put up drafts, notes, lists of thoughts that are surfacing in life right right now. Maybe later things will get pulled into end-products...

Katie, you are such a poet. I'm amazed at the writing you do. Your poems have a power about them, captured in imagery that goes right to the heart. Let's be sure to do some writing projects together this year, somehow.

I think I'll carry a notebook in farmcamp today, and jot down notes about this huge time of transitions, middle age. What's it's like to be in this growth stage... The images in life that speak to me. Ooooooo... with photographs, maybe.

thanks for attending to the creative side, Katie, Skip, David. Let's nurture this side of Fireside.

[Katrin Oddleifson Robertson]

Thanks for your feedback, Connie. That poem came out as I was thinking about how, as women, we can stage our lives as pre, during and post childraising. Somehow the image of a seed in my hand and the possibility of planting new seeds as we age (in a different kind of way that when we were bearing children) made me feel happy. Love the idea of you having a notebook out jotting as you teach - write it write it write it!

[Connie Weber]

BTW, you really have the stage right; I should know, takes one to know one, all that. :-)
"coiled brightness"
"a seed that will leap with its unfurling"

totally works for me!

thanks for finding ways to express what this transition is like...

(You should write a silly poem about that watch gizmo you told me about, the one that reminds us where we were going....)