Eating Color

Retirement means time to rest, heal and

enter the sensations surrounding me.

On rebound from technology, I draw

prayers and make meals in living color.

Today, I prayed for Chloe—a friend’s sick cat—

with grey, pink, brown, blue and golden pencils.

Thirty minutes of prayer sketched Chloe purring

in golden light, enjoying a lap-time cuddle—  

and left me hungry for late harvest foods:
plum tomato red and Romaine lettuce

green, hot radish and sharp red onions,

blue cheese, black olives and golden apples.

Thirty minutes from refrigerator

and chopping board to bowl created

a feast to eat while Finding Your Roots played

on TV.  Dessert is film and popcorn.

I am eating color while surrounded

by flickering images, high golden light

and low shadows, shelved books, sketch books, black cats,
paintings  and clothes.  Home heals me with color.

  ✏

For my prompt

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Food We Eat

 

Praying in Color

 

Detail of a prayer 

 (I ate the salad before photographing it.) 

 My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

 

Take the Long Tour

Robert Stockton, City Lights, NGA 144203

Imagine a person as a city 
that might be surrounded, or, better, as
the lands beyond its suburbs with a heart
so urban it belies the bucolic skin.

Imagine this lover as versatile
as the entire landscape, so layered that 
it would take at least decades to embrace.
Do not then rush the greetings and departures--

but take the long tour for a chance of wild
rides in unfamiliar territory. 

For Sanaa's prompt Wild Friday at Poets United 

which asks for a response to Rupi Kaur's poems.

 My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

 

Everyday Prayer

Young Woman Contemplating by Karin Jonzen

Waking and getting out of bed

With knee lifts and clam shells

However we get out of bed

Day in and day out

Setting up and taking down chairs

Washing dishes

Shopping  Cooking  Sweeping

Washing dishes again

Backing out of driveways

Joining the commute to work

In daylight, in dawn, in dark

Watching the sun rise

Pausing to take photos

Stepping off roads onto paths

Aching in feet, knees and calves

But walking to hear the song

Taking in air, picking up pens

Paper  Notebooks  Cellphones

Books   Leafs   Trash

Washing our hands

For Sumana's Prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Everyday Living

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast

 

 

An Avalanche of Truth

Source*

My homework isn’t done.  By me or anyone.

(No passive voice.  Please add the agent(s) of action.)

(Unless, of course) we are in a leaderless crowd

setting out to complete simple tasks forbidden

by unjust powers, tasks whose only violence

is that they are disobedient to orders.

And still, when we finally stand to say “Enough!”

we push against forces that seem set in hard stone.

But we are stones against mere concrete walls.  We move

with slow landslides, avalanches at work, and we

may be murdered.  By whom?  By those who work

for those who wish to profit as we people pay.

How helpful to speak in passive voice, or to move “I”

into “we” in order to build the avalanche.

I am doing my homework, researching how to

reverse forces eroding my home planet.  How

to join in the exposure of hidden power,

how to join in forces that build rather than destroy.

We home-work together, clear that the work is just,

and just beginning, a creation in progress.

For my prompt Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Truth 

(in honor of Gandhi's birthday)

*From Spiritual Directors International,"What do Greta Thunberg, Leo Tolstoy,

Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have in common?"

 Guest Author: Hans Hallundbaek, M-Div, D-Min

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

If you quote, credit this page.

© 2019 Susan L. Chast