Last summer, a friend introduced me to Jericho Writers, a writing community and business that aims to help writers navigate the craft and the world of publishing. I signed up for their Summer Festival of Writing, and then joined as a regular member.
I am finally, at long last, catching up on some of the webinars from last summer, and slowly working my way through their library of non-summer-festival videos.
The other day, I started the Quiet Poetry Workshop with Dean Atta, a British poet with the most relaxing voice and the kindest demeanor in, quite possibly, the entire world. As I was watching while folding laundry, I didn’t quite manage to keep up with what was going on, but I did use it as inspiration for a short poem I wrote after all the clothes were folded.
~A Few Words About Quiet~
The sounds overwhelm
All day and into the night:
The traffic on the road,
The crash of the sea on the shore,
The sirens wailing towards horrors and hospitals.
And I feel full to bursting—
Desperate for the stillness of a pond
A canoe gliding over water
Lying on my back on a sun-warmed dock
The buzz of deer flies and horseflies
The only interruptions.
Desperate for the quiet of a morning, cold and crisp
The land blanketed by snow or wet, soggy fallen leaves.
The quiet ringing out across the fields
The scratch of a snow shovel on pavement
Taking turns in my ears.
The sounds overwhelm
All day and into the night:
The whirring from helicopters above,
The pulsing from heavy trucks underfoot,
The heavy bass spilling from a nearby car.
And I feel full to bursting—
Desperate for the wail of a loon, the wind in the trees, a stillness that echoes,
The only sounds
In this silence
This quiet
This calm
That I yearn for.
Kamakura Dreamin' 