Poetry Friday: Sustenance (and happy anniversary, Atticus)

Atticus and I celebrated our 41st anniversary this week. 

And all those skeptics thought we'd never make it, (tsk, tsk.) But here we are, and here we'll stand, and here we go, shooting for another forty-one. (Well, umm, maybe at least another 30? We'll take what we can get, I suppose.) 

Here's a poem I wrote quite a while back, one I sometimes recycle on our anniversary. 

Happy anniversary, Atticus. Thank you for the bread and promises. 


Sustenance
by Karen Edmisten 

Bread,
like marriage,
requires the promise
of leavening.

There is flour and water —
foundation — yes,
but it begs
something more:
fermentation, lather,
messiness
and growth.
It must take on life,
risk failure,
swell in size,
though never
sloppily escape
its necessary confines.

My husband
mixes flour
and water,
baking bread for me.
It is nothing,
he says.

It is everything,
I counter,
as I watch him
measure, stir yeast
and add salt,
carefully constructing a promise.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by Jan at Bookseed Studio. 

Photo credit: Giulio Perricone, Pixabay

Poetry Friday: It Ain't Me, Bob (a found poem)

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Poetry Friday crept up on me this week, so I jumped into my archives and pulled this one out. I wrote this (well, found it — it's a found poem made up of Bob Dylan song titles) in 2008, for Jama Rattigan, who was celebrating (as she is often wont to do) the freewheelin' Dylan. 

Have you seen A Complete Unknown? Atticus, Ramona, and I saw it earlier this month. Timothée Chalamet was marvelous as Dylan, of course, but if Edward Norton doesn't get the supporting actor Oscar for his uncanny portrayal of Pete Seeger, I'll storm out of the ceremony. (Oh, wait. I won't be there. But I'll rail like a cranky old man from the comfort of my living room because I loved Pete Seeger and I love Edward Norton for playing him.) 

Admittedly I didn't give this bit of found poetry extensive thought back in 2008 — I just strung a few titles together and hit "Publish" because I thought it would give Jama a smile. But, as I consider how many songs Dylan has written (you can find the staggering list here), I think it would be great fun to give it another go. 

It Ain't Me, Bob

Karen Edmisten 

Just like a woman,
the times they are a-changin'
and like a rolling stone
the answer's blowin'
in the wind.
A hard rain's a'gonna fall
but don't think twice,
it's alright.

It's not dark yet.
Mr. Tambourine Man

is knockin' on heaven's door. 
I've got the Highway 51 blues
but all I really wanna do 
is have
one more cup of coffee
and shelter from the storm.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by the marvelous Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference. 

Poetry Friday: Overthinking my 2025 Word of the Year

Photo by Markus Spiske

When it's time to choose a guiding/inspiring/motivational/comforting/perfect (aye, there's the rub) word to take me through the upcoming year, I do what I do with everything: Overthink it and paralyze myself.  (Do you think that little "perfect" requirement has anything to do with that? Naaaaah.) 

For 2024, I chose "Hope" but also stre-e-e-etched Hope out, seeking maximum mileage: 

Healing
Overcome
Patience
Emerge 

Hope, healing, overcoming, patience, emerging: it was good advice to myself. I needed all that and more in and from 2024. 2023 and 2024 were rough. After a couple years of intense caregiving and the deaths of both of my parents six months apart, I felt like an abandoned shell of myself. Time to reclaim ... something? I headed down that Hope road and it's been helping. (True, I have often felt derailed, especially since November 6th, but that's another subject and another post, a different kind of rough time to come.) 

For my 2025 word, I did an online quiz to see if I was inspired by the word it gave me. I took the quiz three times and every time it gave me Create. I was tempted to fight it, as I often do with that kind of thing. I'm a Gretchen Rubin Questioner/tipping-to-Rebel and I thought: 

"Why should I trust a random online quiz? Shouldn't I find my own word? Wouldn't that be more authentic? Am I lazy to use a quiz? But some quizzes are great, like the Four Tendencies. After all, 'Questioner' nails it. But this is different. Or is it?" 

And then I thought: 

"Shut up and just adopt the word, Karen. Create feels just right after the healing, the overcoming, the patience, and the emergence. JUST USE THE WORD." 

So I will. But I wasn't done (over)thinking it. 

I stre-e-e-etched the potential of Create a little further, and here's what I came up with: 

Conceive
Realize
Envision
Actualize
Truthfulness
Express

I like what it invites me to and I have all kinds of ideas about all kinds of writing I want to create going forward. 

Overthinking, apparently, isn't all bad. 🤔 I even decided it was worth writing an acrostic poem in its honor: 

On January first, I 

Veer into it, the inevitable

Everlasting, maddening 

Routine of it.

Turning to words for direction, to guide me

Hoping one little word can transform twelve months

Into a new creation. 

Nothing, though, not even an all-encompassing word, can 

Know what's to come. Still, I try. 

It's in our bones, in our blood, we can't help it. We

Try. One little word that can transform a year. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect is hosting the Poetry Friday round-up this week. 

Poetry Friday: Hope perching in our souls (Thanks, Emily)

I've got a little more Emily Dickinson for you this week — a well-known classic that I turn to often. It's the perfect way for me to kick off 2025, a year in which we'll need lots of hope perching in our souls to keep us motivated and moving forward. As one wise woman often says, "Don't agonize, organize." 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

(Read the rest here, at The Poetry Foundation.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

The incredible Mary Lee Hahn (she of "herd the poetry cats every six months, create a Poetry Friday schedule, and put together the code that many of us post on our sites" fame) is hosting the round-up this week at A(another) Year of Reading. Thanks, Mary Lee, for your dedication and service to the Poetry Friday community (not to mention your marvelous poems)! 

(Photo thanks to Ray Hennessy at Unsplash.)