Dear Readers of Tennis, Trisomy 21 and Taking in Life Together,
I’ll never forget teaching in Austria years ago. At that time, I was not too much older than my students. I was guided by a senior teacher and walked with him after he observed one class where my instruction that day had been wildly successful with teenagers. Naturally, I tried the very same lesson with the next class. The enthusiasm with this group just wasn’t there.
I was perplexed. My style was the same. The teenagers in one class were the same age as those in the next. I used the same content.
My mentor teacher said afterward (in German) with a smile, “That’s teaching, my young friend. One hour you’re a hero, the next hour you come back down to earth!”
And so it is with my experiment for a group poem with followers of Tennis, Trisomy 21 and Taking in Life Together!
I was astonished by the responses and number of new followers after the first post a few weeks ago. People actually came up to me in Hawaii where I live and talked about how they loved the idea of creating a poem together.
Last weekend, with our small family solidly booked for evening and day meetings and ceremonies, and our daughter’s birthday celebrations, I thought I might post early the continuation of the group poem, that even if I sent it out on Friday (a day or two early), the momentum would continue to build.
Well, just like teaching in Austria years ago, what worked the first time didn’t the second go-around!
I rarely check reader viewership because writing well and being inspired by fellow bloggers and followers of Tennis, Trisomy 21 and Taking in Life Together have always meant far more to me than statistics. But I did notice near radio silence after the last post. I didn’t take it personally! People are busy.
I’ve finished 24 marathons. Momentum comes and goes. I once had real fear at my 18th marathon that I would have to stop at 13 miles. Both my legs were so tight with cramps that I couldn’t move. I prayed and took one step forward. Then another. In a few hours, I was at the finish line celebrating!
So back to our group poem that I would like to finish with all of you today. (I am someone, though, who believes a poem is never truly finished even if it has been published. I love revisiting poems I wrote years ago. But that is another topic for another post!)
A refresher: we made progress with the last post about a tree that had fallen on our property in West Virginia during a windstorm. We had no choice but to have it cut down to its stump where it now faces its companion tree with which it shared a hammock and roots that ran deep.
All right, Readers, I’m hoping to put this poem to bed for a while. The new words from the last post are in green, and those from today will be in blue. Please contribute! Let’s finish a nice poem together. Enjoy the journey!
Working Title:
The Ground Beneath Us
Working Theme:
Loss followed by new beginnings
Working 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th and final Stanzas
(I’ll keep them short so that readers are more likely to participate):
The winds moved through our home
in February, when all was spare and cold,
that was already spare and cold
in February, the ground beneath us hard as stone.
in its winter sleep.
All was calm before As And then one gust
after another shook us.
We called out, Our fears ran deep.
Who will now look after us?
We cried out to each other,
voices strained and silenced by wind,
our pain as deep as roots
our pain ran through we shared that now laid bare
by barren chapters while we waited out the storm,
we shared. the ground beneath us
still there, our faith unscathed.
Dear Readers, I hope to hear from you! Many writers can make a good poem!
In taking this experimental group poem through a third draft, I realized the edits, even color coded, are probably hard to follow. I want to leave them in, though, to encourage writers, especially those new to poetry, so they know that for even someone like me who has written poetry all his life, a poem is a constant work in progress. I will share the cleaned-up version after I receive reader input for this post.
My husband asked me yesterday about keeping the blog going as I’m approaching the end of its third year. I will. Writing, like training for marathons, has its up and downs. Some days it as natural as breathing. Other times, it can be a bit painful. Whenever I finish a marathon, though, (so far 24), a poem, or a blog post, I’m relieved, a little elated, and I want to train for the next one!