10 May 2016
It’s another rainy day here in central Virginia, another in a line of nearly two weeks. The Japanese have more than fifty words for rain, and there are 140 more at this link in a great op-ed from the times.
My yard is a swamp.
Right now, I’m thinking saturation, saturated, drenched, waterlogged.
Make art about different kinds of rain, or words for rain, or saturation.
8 May 2016
Under the weather and missing my mama this Mother’s Day, thinking about her hands–her mother’s hands, her gardening hands, her nurse’s hands. She never had a manicure. I can’t recall her ever having her nails painted at all, but man, it seemed the whole world rose from those hands. And now, I watch my daughter, a first-time mama, her hands so gentle and loving as she cares for my grandson. Yep, the whole world ❤ That’s what it is.
Make art about a mother’s hand.
9 May 2016
So many graduation activities this weekend, last grades going in, so many of these angel babies heading off to next adventure.
Make art about setting off into the unknown.
3 May 2016
Exam week, and it’s crazy here 🙂 Make art about things that test us.
4 May 2016
Star Wars Day 🙂 Even as a little kid, I stared at the sky expecting to see a UFO zipping across those wide coastal skies every time I looked up 🙂
Make art about what you see in the stars.
5 May 2016
I both gave and received help today. It was awesome. Make art about people helping people.
Happy May Day! So in love with life today 🙂 Love is Liberation.
Make art about one of the ways you Love the world.
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 ❤
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.
Happy National Poetry Month! One of my favorite poets, and one of my favorite truths 🙂 “A child’s wisdom is wisdom still.”~Jewish proverb
Make art about what children know.
Happy National Poetry Month! No way the month can pass without Walt Whitman ❤ I still have the copy of Leaves of Grass my mama gave me when I was ten.
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things, science,
The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.
I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.
But I too announce solid things,
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,
triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities—all is as it should be.
Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth,
The rapt promises and luminé of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.
Make art about walking.
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.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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