March 2023 SOLC–Day 31
A huge thank you to Two Writing Teachers for all that they do to create an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write, learn, share and grow.
http://www.twowritingteachers.org
This post is also a Poetry Friday post.
Whew! Well, here it is. The last post in this year’s challenge. Success! I won’t say it’s been easy. In fact, this year it’s been more difficult for me than it has in most of my previous years (all 8 or 9 of them–I can never remember). In short, while part of me will miss the daily posting, a big part is heaving a huge sigh of relief.
I struggled with sleep again last night and composed an awesome acrostic from the word “Slice”. I thought it would be a great ending post, and perhaps that’s why I was finally able to drift back off into sleep. But when I woke this morning it had disappeared into the mist. I sat down to write one again, hoping to retrieve some fragments, but the remnants were well and truly scattered.
I sat for a long time, debating what to stay. What to write. Finally, I realized that I really want to end this month and begin this new day with gratitude. I once met a beautiful, wise soul who said, “All my prayer is praise.” I’m not much of a prayer person, but her words sparked something within me. I love the idea of rooting myself in a practice of giving thanks, of praising. I am far from successful at this, but still I persevere.
Next my thoughts turned to a recent ELA prompt to write a “Pile Poem”. Amy Kay, the mentor poet shared there, was apparently inspired by this quote:
“So, what if, instead of thinking about solving our whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.“
A Pile of Gratitude
Choosing the first one is probably the hardest. My husband? My three children? The blessing of my sisters? Living in Maine? Maybe the Carolina wren who sings the day awake or the fox sparrow scrabbling beneath the birch? I can't forget the marsh, the beach, the deep green of pine and steely grey granite. Each day's sunrise. The ever-present chickadee. The bold swagger of a crow on glittering snow. The laughter of children. Soon, I suspect, my lines will be overflowing, overrunning the page, the margins, and rewinding onto the next line, pooling, puddling like the extra fabric of curtains in old homes, and I think what a wonder it is to live a life that is so full of beauty, friends, family, community, that I have to worry about not having enough room to write it all on the page. It simply won't fit within the margins. And isn't that just grand?
©Molly Hogan
After writing this, I previewed to see how the poem looked when published. I realized I was right–when constricted to the blog format, my lines took on a life of their own. No longer does my poem have the ever increasing lines of my draft. To capture that, I’d have to play a bit more with technology, and I decided not to do that. It feels right to let my overflow of gratitude take over the form and make it its own. A teetering messy pile of sorts, one I might need to reconstruct now and again if it tilts or threatens to topple. That feels just about right.
Every day this month the SOL icon has been centered at the top of my post with a thank you to Two Writing Teachers, but that’s so easy to overlook. So here it is again: A huge thank you to Two Writing Teachers for all that they do to create an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write, learn, share and grow. A huge additional thank you to everyone who took the time to read and comment on my blog during the month. I only wish I’d had more time to meander, read and comment along the way.
Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Mary Lee Hahn at her blog, A(nother) Year of Reading. Yet another thing to add to my pile of gratitude.