We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

3.11.24

Days of thunder


always sudden —

I unplug modem, devices.


(Modem’s new.

Earlier storm 

killed the last.)


Few chances 

to share poems online

though I still write. 


Silver lining:

time


to find them.



In response to Friday Writings #151 at Poets and Storytellers United, where Magaly invites us to be inspired by Mary Oliver's poem,  “The Uses of Sorrow”: 

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. 

Admittedly, the 'darkness' in my poem is more in the nature of an inconvenience. But I had trouble thinking of any darkness I've experienced which was also a gift. I guess it takes me even longer than it did Mary.

17 comments:

  1. Time, I suppose, is the gift, and occasionally to be detached from our devices. :)

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  2. Storms come and go but what remains are our thoughts strewn in cadence.

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    1. Ooh, 'strewn in cadence' is nice. Yes, I'll take that!

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  3. I haven't lost any electronic item to a storm in a very long time. But the other day, a storm tripped a kitchen fuse and I woke up to cold (and undone) bone broth. It wasn't pleasant.

    Time can be a fantastic silver lining. My doctor told me that I have to get back to regular exercise very slowly--my bones were affected by the cancer treatment, and need time to get better. I don't love it. But I do like that now I have enough time--almost nine months--to get stronger (and some of my chunkaliciousness).

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    1. It's not comparable to what you've been through — but I'm glad to say I've pulled up well after the latest (brief) hospitalisation. Everyone tells me I look fantastic and I feel it too. However I also need to make a fairly gradual return to more activity. Though I trust it will be quicker than 9 months. After the whole thing, I am now listening to my body much more closely than ever before.

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    2. We shall listen to our bodies together. In hope that next year, we can celebrate Beltane/Samhain with a lively dance. 😁

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  4. I am glad you always write - it is certainly always a pleasure to read - Jae

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  5. Silver linings are in short supply at the moment. I remember how important it is to unplug when the storms arrive. Still do it even in the city....yep got the jerry cans full of drinking water, the filter, the portable gas stove, loads of battery lamps and batteries , tom tom drums, whistles, tarps .. Living for years out past the Black Stump leaves its mark:) Take care Rosemary.

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    1. I wasn't quite fast enough to unplug, the time before last. But the flash new modem, replaced free by my provider, and latest model, is a gift / silver lining.
      I'm not as well prepared as you, but at least witches always have candles. Nowadays, of course, everyone has a torch on their mobile phone too.

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  6. I hate those cyberglitches too! The gift of darkness on the screen *can* be saving us from worse things, but since we don't know what those things might be....

    PK

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    1. Besides, one can be discriminating in what one chooses to give attention to.

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  7. It's like a whole new world opens up once the devices are offline...a definite silver lining - I have to leave my laptop (even phone sometimes) in a different room to get any reading done...!!!

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    1. I got lots of reading done after my 10 days in hospital, when I wasn't allowed to do much else, and was very low on energy anyway. And also quite a bit of bingeing on Netflix. I've bounced back a lot better after my more recent one-day procedure, but am still not online as much as I used to be.

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