"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Archive for the ‘animals’ Category

A Dream, A Meditation, and A Prompt: Ecosystems

 

I dreamt my husband and mama, both gone now for years, having walked on to the next life, were helping me in the garden, setting up two new raised beds, working the dark rich soil with rakes and with our hands. I was planting turnips, the seeds so small, so many shades of purple, lavender, violet, plum, deep purply rose. “Plant cabbage with them,” Mama said, “Good companions.” John nodded, “Or spinach, or peas.” He grinned. “They like each other.”

I woke up thinking about companion planting, about ecosystems.

Ecology is all about interconnection and eternal change, creating patterns, connection, cause and effect, that shape every organism and phenomenon. Our own minds work this way, but, I wonder, Can we step back and recognize that? Can we extend that eco-understanding beyond our needs, thinking like an ecosystem”? Recognizing, developing, and honoring our “eco-mind”?

Wouldn’t an eco-mind also able to see that the survival of our own species, our own existence, our own desire to thrive, is connected to our consciously creating the context needed for that thriving, and that it is inextrcably tied to the well-being, the continuation, of other species and the health of our wider ecology.

Can we learn to see that we don’t exist above or beyond the ecosystem? That those turnip seeds, in their tiny purple majesty, are as essential as the bees that come to the comfrey, the deer who watch from the shaded wood, the cardinal that sings from the Guardian Oak, the groundhog who thinks I don’t see her in the tall grass at the edge of the yard, to the spider silent in the rain-silvered web at the side of the garage, are as essential to our own survival as they are to ours?

Make art about interconnections, about ecosystems

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2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Fame, and Ms. Dickinson

2 June 2016

Fame is a bee
by Emily Dickinson
 
Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.

Make art about bees, or fame.

DSCN3292

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2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Remembering Your Magic

24 May 2016

Sometimes we forget how powerful we are. 

Make art about remembering your own magic. 

butterfly-woman-s-hand-motion-concept-isolated-39769656

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2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Hoping We Remember Who We Are

19 May 2016

When everything finally has been wrecked and further shipwrecked, 

When their most ardent dream has been made hollow and unrecognizable, 

They will feel inside their limbs the missing shade of blue that lingers….

 

–from “Half Omen Half Hope” by Joanna Klink

 

Make art about your hopes for the human race.

peace-on-earth-hands

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2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Catch-Up! Porches, and Pictures, and Plans–Oh My!

 

 

13 May 2016

Headed off to teach a weekend Promptathon workshop at The Porches Writing Retreat 🙂

Make art about porches.

upper porch

 

14 May 2016

Saturday morning at The Porches Writing Retreat, and we’re working on Voices.

Make art about the voice you hear down in the hall.

hallway_to_heaven_by_aleco247-d7z1jqv

 

15 May 2016

I have a habit of collecting discarded photographs in thrift stores, those precious memories sold in estate sales, so many beautiful faces, so many voices, so many stories.

other people's pictures

Make art about other people’s pictures.

 

16 May 2016

Had some sweet winged company.

A luna moth emerges from its cocoon with not long for this earth. The average lifespan is a week, during which time they have no means to eat (no mouths). Their week (and life) goal is simple: to reproduce. To make love, the strongest of human emotions.

Many observers believe this to be a reminder of the importance of love in our short time on this earth. Live and love to the fullest and enjoy every experience that gets thrown your way. 

Make art about Loving fully in the moment. 

 

luna moth

 

 

17 May 2016 

Okay, so the garden’s cleaned up and turned over, but it’s pouring cold hard rain outside. So I guess I’m sewing, instead of planting today.

Make art about having your plans thwarted.

hard rain

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, workshop, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Learning to Fly

6 May 2016

Make art inspired by this, by wings. 

use your wings 2

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2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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May Day! Daily Prompt! Late, But Then, Love Is Always On Time

Happy May Day! So in love with life today 🙂 Love is Liberation. 

Make art about one of the ways you Love the world. 

love-you-language

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2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Kindness, Peace, and Blessings

Happy Last Day of National Poetry Month 2016! Although, of course, I think every month is Poetry Month, and every day is Poetry Day 🙂

The prompts will continue 🙂 But since I started with one of my top three favorite poems (Power by Adrienne Rich), I have to close out this month long celebration with the other two poems that fill out my top What-Poems-Would-You-Take-To-A-Deserted-Island three. 

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

 

And….what may be my favorite (if I have to pick) poem ❤ 

A Blessing

James Wright, 1927 – 1980

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Make art about kindness, blessings, peace. 

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Finding That Way Out

 

Happy National Poetry Month!

I love this poem, its fierceness, its choice.

A Message from the Wanderer
by William Stafford

Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.

Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occured to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.

Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.

Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then—even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.

That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

Now—these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we 
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.

There will be that form in the grass.

Make art about escape, the “thousands of ways to escape.”

escape-room

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2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt :-) Will We Listen?

Happy National Poetry Month!

The Messenger

by Ann Stanford

I don’t deny that I believe in ghosts
Myself being one. No, not the ultimate last
Spirit, I mean, but this is a messenger.
Soft, soft, last night, falling into sleep
I rose like smoke up, curving past the window,
Floating, a grey cloud seaward, slow and pale.

And then, the wings!

Did you hear the birds piling against your window?
A snow of wings, crowding and gentle, crying
Over and over, each with a single errand
Light cannot bring, nor ever my tongue would say.
Archaic doves, rustling your sleep, and calling
Crowding upon you, drifting and crying love.

Make art about a messenger.

homeless angel

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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