Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The Uses of Poetry

Every day we start our interdisciplinary palliative care meeting with a poem. It helps us center, and we are able to focus on our patients, their families, and how we can best serve them. Today's poem, read by our chaplain, is by Pat Snyder, who started the Amherst Writers & Artists Workshop:


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THE PATIENCE OF ORDINARY THINGS

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes.  How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?


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I hope today I can be as generous as my shoes, as open as a window.


And today's NaPoWriMo prompt:

"Today’s prompt is drawn from an idea that Kelsey Howard gave me — that of a poem that tells a lie. I think you could have a poem that’s all lies (that could be very funny — full of things like “the sun is the size of a nickel”) or a poem that steadily builds to telling one big whopper. I can imagine these being very poignant, or very much like goofy shaggy-dog stories. I suppose it all comes down to what you want to lie about!"


Maybe I will get to that one later. 

Blessings on this day!

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