Angela Parlin

So Much Beauty in All This Chaos

31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Westminster Bridge}

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stories london

Welcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 21.

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

by William Wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

///////////

I’ve missed a lot of mornings, especially under the influence of jet lag.

But those times we’ve ventured out, into an unfamiliar city before the crowds arrived, those are hard to forget.

The city wears more than one face. I’ve seen her most often, dressed and ready for the day.

I’ve seen her bustling and busy, crowded, with all her makeup in place. I’ve seen her hosting street performers and with fresh art lining the length of her sidewalks. I’ve seen her with lines longer than we wished to wait. I’ve heard strategies for best arrival times and needed a spreadsheet to keep them all straight.

I’ve also seen the city just after dawn, still rubbing her eyes and waiting for coffee to kick in. Silent and bare, but not for long.

Wordsworth describes the beauty of a silent morning in London, which leaves me longing to return and to wake earlier next time. Not only in London.

Every city has her own stories to tell, and I want to be there to listen.

Last spring we visited London and ventured out early to jog and climb steps. We weren’t prepared for the way the beautiful city shivered, and next she cried cold, wet tears. So we jumped through puddles, but I didn’t last long in the chilly rain.

I hope we’ll return one day.

I hope we’ll find a bare naked morning when London’s heart lies still and the whole city sparkles while the sun begins to saturate the sky.

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

Write about the most beautiful place Earth has shown you.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Dream Within a Dream}

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dream eternal

Welcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 20.

Confession Time: I had a serious Edgar Allen Poe obsession in high school. I’m a little baffled by it now. He was so dark! So depressing! But I was a melancholy teenager, and some of the fascination was found in the stories behind the poems.

I’ll never forget the beginning of Poe’s poem, Alone, because it made me feel–well, less alone.  “From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As other saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring–…” Back then, I wanted to be like the people around me, but I felt so different. I didn’t have the wisdom–or hindsight–that comes with age, but I did have poetry. 🙂 Now, for another of my favorites…

A Dream Within a Dream

by Edgar Allen Poe

 

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

This much let me avow—

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if Hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand—

How few! Yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep—while I weep!

O God! Can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

///////////

 

It’s tempting to wonder how this could all be real, and why it really matters.

It’s tempting to doubt what’s behind the clouds and Who placed us here among these trees.

It’s tempting to tip back another drink and claim it’s all just a dream within a dream.

But while Hope flies away sometimes, she continues to return to me.

I stare her in the face, and she tells me where I’ll find something eternal here.

She tells me to listen to the sound of rain coming down from the heavens in sheets.

She tells me to stop moving long enough to notice the pain I feel when we wave goodbye again.

She says, Go back to the sea and watch the mighty waves force themselves against the shore.

She asks me to name the way I feel after I’ve wasted time, and I hate that feeling.

She requires me to sit on the porch in the dark and listen to the voice of the moon.

Then she draws me out in daylight, to pick a collection of deep red dying leaves.

She speaks from little voices around my table, which haven’t been tainted by disbelief.

And I sit and wonder how I missed all the eternity my eyes now see.

poetry writing promptsWriting Prompt:

Write about what you do when Hope flies away.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Poetry Arrived}

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poetry arrivedWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 19.

Poetry Arrived

by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age … Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

///////////

I was young, when You arrived, in search of me.

Having chosen me? Me? From before I was born?

You have continually confirmed it. Yes, you. Chosen. Sought. Bought. Cherished.

I could never explain why, and I’ll be honest, it bothers me. Why me? Why not everyone? I used to often wonder, How did I become so lucky?

Knowing full well lucky was by far the wrong word to describe this gift.

I have never found the right words, to say thank You.

I have never erupted in enough prayers, or come to You with enough consistency, or given You enough of my moments. But I know that’s not even possible. You’ve given me more than I yet understand. I could never repay you, though I’ll try with my life.

I know exactly where You came from. I know how you arrived in the Spirit and how you left here in the clouds.

You left at first on that tree, carried into the cave, on a pitch black Friday afternoon. And then You weren’t there anymore, and You walked again among the people You touched.

You returned to where You came from, to make things ready for those You love. For anyone who will dare to love You back.

I was tiny when You started in my soul, when I only began to decipher Your fire.

When I spoke that first faint line, that I wanted to stand on the side of the King. When I first knew, You are King of the world.

In a way, I saw the Light, in one great big grand sudden moment.

But life’s been a winding night, and all I did was follow a rising star. Little by little, You opened my eyes to the way, and I’m still growing less blind.

You have healed me and saved me and broken my heart in ways it needed breaking. You have summoned me and touched me and made me a part of You, and I will always dare to love You back.

I know You’re still searching, for any who will dare to love You back.

All those the Father gives me will come to Me,

and whoever comes to Me I will never drive away. John 6:37

poetry writing promptsWriting Prompt:

Write about a street from which you were summoned.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {Miracles}

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miracles

Welcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 18.

Miracles

by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim–the rocks–the motion of the waves–the ships with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?

///////////

I was thinking about breathing.

A while back, we’d read through that respiratory chapter in the anatomy book, and I lay in bed, paying attention to my breathing the way I sometimes do with my children while they sleep.

When we sleep, our breathing slows, and so does the pumping of our hearts. Yet it keeps on pumping and we keep on breathing all night long, every time we go to sleep.

We don’t do anything to help. We don’t control any part of it at all.

It’s rest. It’s life. It’s breath. It’s out of our hands.

It’s a continual miracle.

And so are the people walking around this house.

So are the people I’m so fortunate to know, and the people I encounter while running errands, and the ones I go to church with and the ones who live on my street.

They’re all miracles. Every one, so beautifully distinct.

Do you ever look at the people in your life and realize they are miracles?

Miracles surround us, and they happen within us, day after day after day.

It’s no wonder Whitman claims that he knows of nothing else but miracles.

I think it’s important to stop for a bit and remember.

poetry writing prompts

Writing Prompt:

Write about something commonplace, which is also a miracle.

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31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts {The Word}

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sun rise kingdom giftWelcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 17.

Happy Monday! Sometimes Monday morning arrives, and well, It feels like a Monday. But other times, at the end of one of those run-run-run weekends, I look forward to Monday, for the ability to carve out a little downtime and recover from the weekend.

Today’s poem offers an invitation I’m planning to attend to. In between grocery shopping and pulling the house back together, I’ll be taking a little time to sit out in the sun and listen, and I hope you’ll do the same. Enjoy…

The Word

by Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom

of the crossed-out list

of things you have to do today,

between ‘green thread’

and ‘broccoli’ you find

that you have penciled ‘sunlight’.

Resting on the page, the word

is beautiful. It touches you

as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present

he had sent from someplace distant

as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,

among your duties,

pleasure is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.

Do you remember?

that time and light are kinds

of love, and love

is no less practical

than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?

Tomorrow you may be utterly

without a clue,

but today you get a telegram

from the heart in exile,

proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,

the king and queen alive,

still speaking to their children,

–to anyone among them

who can find the time

to sit out in the sun and listen.

///////////

This morning, I drove across town to stripes of pink and purple.

Like wide strokes from the Sun’s paintbrush, they filled a light blue morning sky. I had to come home and google it to find out why. I was always just enduring science class when I was in school. It’s not like I remember these things.

Back then, I took the sun for granted. It was simply there every morning, like the moon and the stars came out at night. I didn’t really care why or how or wonder, what if it hadn’t been?

I just knew that it was, and it always would be.

I love the picture Scripture gives, when it compares God and His glory with the sun. It calls Jesus Christ the rising sun from heaven.

Because of the tender mercy of our God,

by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven,

to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the path of peace.

Luke 1:78-79

This was part of Zechariah’s prophecy from the Holy Spirit. It came to him after he doubted God’s plan and had to remain silent for an extended time. (Read Luke 1 for more of this story.)

Just after this, Jesus was born into the world. The rising sun came to us from heaven.

People walking in darkness saw a great light.

We know another day is coming, and for those who do not serve God, it will be a day of judgment. But for all who revere His name–

The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.

(Malachi 4)

So pencil it in today, no matter what else you do. Take the time to sit with Him and listen. Let Him proclaim to your heart in exile that the kingdom still exists.

“As if you had a friend and sunlight were a present he had sent from someplace distant.”

Just as if.

poetry writing promptsWriting Prompt:

Write about what this means to you–that time and light are kinds of love.

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