Dear Ones,
Today I am sharing my poetry writing practice and the results of it from today - as well as a personal sharing.
AND I am inviting you to notice what framework you are looking at your life through - to get it conscious for yourself.
Today’s poetry prompt was an open gate, a metaphor that allowed this poem and to come through. It could just as well be an open window overlooking Florence like this photo that Jonathan took in 2019! This was our last trip before ‘shelter-in-place’ was a thing. We haven’t really travelled since then and things have been on the rough side for us for quite a bit. So I am noticing that gates, windows and doors are showing up a LOT.
I am still not sure what the open gate really meant for me today but it is in the exploring of it that that poems sometimes spring out. I am still on the despair and desire theme too. Maybe you will write a poem in response or your own? That is another practice, reading any poem and then using something in it, even one word or a feeling as a jumping in place.
Sending love for your day,
Shiloh Sophia
~~~
Open Gate
Between the apple tree
and the dappled blue spruce
There is an open gate
If you should find yourself there
on the edge of things
pause with respect
before just walking on through
On the other side of the gate
you can never be sure
what you may find waiting
Usually it is something
you have wanted to avoid
and you just can’t anymore
and despair is Just. Right. There.
OR
You find something
you have desired
all your life and
suddenly there it is…
Only now you aren’t sure
you want what you thought
you wanted before
That is because who you were
before
just isn’t who you are now
Before.
Before is the place where
you didn’t know just what love
would ask of you
when you agreed to share yourself
in exchange for a chance
at a heart filled with impossible light
Light that cannot be contained
That desire you have been nursing
was before you needed spectacles
to read the evening poetry by firelight
Sometimes if you look into the flames
with a soft and sleepy gaze
You can even see the open gate
and your despair or desire
winking and twinkling through
This opening is not a sentence
or a summons
The open gate is finally coming
to the awareness of choice
When you gain awareness of choice
you garner favor with the poets
We all want that!
Oh… all the times you thought
you didn’t have choice
when you actually did
can sometimes be
a stunning reckoning
but then you hear your lover’s voice
calling from the other room
and you realize you would risk it all again
and again and again
Their heart is the opening
and there is no gate needed
at all between you
You just must remember
who they are
while not forgetting
who you have become
and how they have become
more of who they are
No one said there would be
a clear path through the
wild garden of berries and
bramble bruises and skinned knees
on the way to the open gate
The open gate is awareness
of choice
and the acceptance of love
and the writing of this poem for you
Right here between the guardians
of the apple tree and the dappled spruce
This love is
Shiloh Sophia
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