Gifts with Heart

 

Mom hooking a rug.

As gifts,
my wordcraft
couldn’t compete
with the homemade scarves
afghans, socks, jam, wooden bowls, and art
crafted by other members of my family.
I knew that, even as I made
tiny books, calendars with my photographs,
and fully designed books of poetry.
Except for my brother and mother,
I don’t know if anyone read them.
But I persisted. I felt the heart
in the other homemade items
and was thrilled to put my heart in mine—
my heartbreak over wars and racism
and climate change refugees and trees,
my heart lifted with the sea and sun and rain
and living and growing beings.
And what did it matter if others lost the gifts
in piles of papers and bookshelves?
These framed poems were gifts to me as well. 
I learned to stage my poems between readings,
I learned to get poems out there
overcoming introversion and fear
of being vulnerable, a crippling fear
hidden in shyness, in quietness.  And now
I know your poems, too, are gifts of heart
beyond gifting.  And I see earth’s poems
on the other side of catastrophe,
a loving heart that doesn’t end.

 For Sumana's prompt "Home Made" at What's Going On?

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Let the Heart Remember

 

source

Does guilt prevent you
from touching the joy in the
corners of your heart?
 
Thinking that slaughter
is somewhere else, thinking that
you can’t stop the blood.
 
Feeling that, though you
beat them over the head with
words, nations murder.
 
They destroy children
and environments where life
could and did thrive once.
 
Your heart holds on to
the pain, but your heart also
remembers delight.
 
Is it possible that
joy generates ideas
more useful than guilt?
 
Throw off the blanket
of guilt, see what love can do.
Let your heart remember.

 For Mary's prompt "What the Heart Remembers" at What's Going on?

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast  

A New Year's Prayer

 

On each New Year’s Day I remind
myself that life was created for joy,
and resolve to keep in touch with
the dance of life this time around.
 
And each year I find myself lost
in heaviness, scattered in so
much of everything that I
lose sight of the sacred dance.
 
Worse, I see it everyday
in parks, woods, streams, and flowerbeds
but forget to belong to it,
to be inspired and to inspire.
 
I forget to wipe off the blood
of war, mud of politics, and
tears of failure before climbing
into bed to rest and renew.
 
And so I pray the Great Spirit
keep reminding me to free my
soul each day, to smile with love,
and to join in the sacred dance.
 

Inspired by Sherry's prompt "Being a Good Creature" at What's Going On?

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast  

De-coding an Old Poem

 

Today I read poems I wrote 10 years ago
and didn’t understand them, except
I could tell they were intense.  No
playing around allowed.  I must have
understood them once upon a time. 
Myth is like that, and tarot cards, and
spells—accessible to those who first
coded and recorded their secrets and
hid their power, and after that,
a mystery to solve.  If I let them sink in 
past the scrutiny of the mind, and seek
them on the emotive, on the playful level.
If I laugh at myself, laugh with myself.
If I trust that I was present at the beginning.

Then, relaxed enough, I believe I can return
and read to find the hidden meaning.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast 

In praise of forgetfulness

 

 

Forgetfulness walks hand in hand
with its twin, forgiveness. 
I’m grateful for this pairing,
Mom and Dad.  We held each other
in anger and recrimination
far too long.  I regret we had
to age to overcome details,
but I’m grateful that it happened
before you died.  Love is left.
The pride and sharing I longed for
from you is partly realized,
as is the closeness you wanted
from me after decades of distance.
 
Over the years I lived fully—
without apology—but tried
to share my art, loves, plans
and hopes with you as they evolved.
Better to remember Rilke’s
lesson to rejoice in your own
growth, but don't try to take your
folks with you.  They wouldn't be
able to understand.  Simply
love.*      At last, all of us did.
Forgiveness walked hand in hand
with its twin, forgetfulness, to heal
the pain we caused each other. 

 

For Sumana's prompt "Forgetfulness" at What's Going On? 

 

* ”. . . rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand.  Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them . . . .” ~ R.M.Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1934),  Page 39, “Letter Four” 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast 

Today’s Sermon

 

                                     

is waking early enough
            to catch rain at dawn,
 
to stretch the pain out
            of my body before rising,
 
and to remember the tasks
            and joys of the day.
 
Today’s sermon is
            wind rushing clouds away
 
so my errands are dry
            and not sloppy.
 
Today’s sermon is
            clumps of grounded brown leaves
 
along the walkway
            that leads to my car.
 
Today’s sermon is
            easing into my seat
 
returning packages 
            to on-line merchants,
 
getting a haircut, and
            freeing my mind.
 
Today’s sermon is
            that some days carry
 
grace without surprise
            and without rainbows.

 For Mary's prompt "Today's Sermon" at What's Going on?

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast