Poetry Friday

Ah, yet another week in which I had no time to blog and then abruptly found myself face to face with Poetry Friday.

It's been a week of converging, unconnected events that conspired to brew a perfect storm of activity. These weeks leave me weary, and yet not a single one of these things was overwhelming or dreary or difficult. Just collectively exhausting.

I'm sharing this poem from Barbara Crooker not because of its focus on brokenness but for its razor-sharp observation of what comes after. "Hope is borne on wings," she says, and although my week was about a common life and not a tragedy, I find myself more buoyant for these words, and grateful for poets like Crooker who can startle me out of myself.

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,
by Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.

(Read the rest here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

The round up is being hosted today by Laura Purdie Salas at her new Wordpress-y cyber home. She's still getting moved in, but clearly she has her priorities straight -- the bookshelves are unpacked and, for me, that's always a sign that I'm home.