Abundance Makes A Bun Dance

Hot Cross Buns

Mention abundance to me and I have visions

of hot-cross buns dancing, everyday a Good

Friday with lilies and eggs in the palms of hands—

everyday Easter rising with gifts and promise.

Mention abundance and some imagine money—

paper bills and bonds, bank accounts and gold, silver,

diamonds, mansions, ocean liners and jets—

all in turning bingo cages, prizes for all.

Mention abundance and a girl clears overflow from

closets, drawers and bookcases.  Who needs seven

pairs of sneakers, four pairs of boots, five coats, twenty

tee shirts, ten pairs of pants and eight hundred (plus) books?

Mention abundance and she helps us open doors

for world-wide feasts and giveaways—pot-latch learned from

the first peoples of North America.  We feel

the gains of giving, its love and spacious-ness.

Desire abundance and create a bun dance—just 
by mixing dough, adding crosses, letting them rise, 
and baking—just by opening the door to give
and take and celebrate the end of scarcity.

For my prompt at Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Abundance

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Finding the Road of Balance

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

~ William Blake, “The Proverbs of Hell”

 from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I use the fall and catch method to walk.

Balance faltered when I sold my bicycle,

or vice versa. The more distance I tried

to cover, the more headstrong and headlong.

Physical balance declines, but other

hidden powers gain equilibrium:

Passion partners with common sense, rashness

bows to temperance, and eagerness waits.

Momentum fights this alteration.  Habit

cries out “Get hot” and wisdom sighs “Stay Cool,”

as if gangs wrestle in my soul.  Yet right

sharing of personal resources must win.

Join a protest or write a poem?  Accept

new appointments or practice saying  “no”?

Tell all the truth, or tell it slant?  Provide

an answer or give someone else the chance?  

Read two chapters instead of the whole book.

Play solitaire for minutes, not for hours.

Eat one plateful, saving for tomorrow.

Stick to the lesson, not juicy tangents.  

Meditation helps, even five minutes

a day.  No need to crowd and overdo,

substituting falseness for innocence.
Nothing more urgent than patience.

For my prompt Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Balance

(I allude to a song in West Side Story and an Emily Dickinson poem.)

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Face Lift

A sweat-wet shirt fallen in the stairwell,

sharp smell of fresh paint held in humid air,

startling wet gleam from stain-free window sill—

Steps creak-sigh with an edge of contentment.

Delighted treads and risers smile and sing

as they escort three climbers to their rooms:

we who at last attend to space and skin

of home—reflection of the souls it holds—

face that greets us as work releases us.

For my prompt at 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Evidence/Clues

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Charity/Communication

Figure 1.3 The Transaction Model of Communication

Both giver and receiver must be in the loop—

without the one, the other expires—or holds

and holds and waits for some enlightenment.

How can I take?  How can I give?  What will complete

the circuit?  Guardians could ask when they dress their

children in neighbors’ hand-me-downs for school.

Givers could practice not shaming the poor.  Yearly,

bullies find their fodder and relentlessly aim

their jibes to kids’ guts, so charity fails.

Inspire, expire—inhale, exhale—again.  Direct

energy into growing pains.  Eat, defecate,

and everything between.  Health beats out shame.

We live through it and grow. No harm, no foul.  Now each

of us have giveaway routines.  We lovingly

fold almost new, and pay forward with sighs.

The child inside—who’ll never be outgrown—nods yes.

She feels the giving as a gift, a hug—circuit

complete, both sides a single beat.

For my prompt tomorrow at Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Charity

My blog poems are rough drafts.

lease respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Tangle to Untangle

From Wall Street Journal article by Carrie Melago
(2015, 2018)

 

I.                    

Circle

Grab hands

Under/over

Into a tight

Tipsy knot.

Untangle

Still clasping—

Grunt, nod, nudge

Sans words—

Shh!  Shh. 

     II.

What if we stood so close we touched

And saw the expression of mouths

And looked into each other’s eyes?

What if we learned how to read hearts

And didn’t look away?  What if

We remembered we once knew how?

What if we each had fairytale

Stories?  What if we untangled

Childhoods that were wrong or absent?

    III.

What if we spoon fed our stories

To strangers, listened to stranger

Tales and wove them all together?

What if we took the Fates into

Our own hands—to spin, measure and cut

As if nothing were determined—

As if we could separate strands,

Untangle months of neglect, years

Of forget, eons of nothing.

     IV.

Something lies underneath the game,

Veins throb beneath the disguising

Clothes and skins of our suffering.

The knots aren’t too tight—not yet—

Lightness loosens them, touch is balm

For open wounds and angry scars.

And what if healing mattered more 

Than tyrants and presidents, more 

than languages, homelands and stars?

For my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ What if . . . ?

The Three Fates Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos  (16th Century)

My blog poems are rough drafts.

lease respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

The World, a Beautiful Place

The Palisades cliffs overlooking the Hudson River

The WORLD is a beautiful place.

The world IS a beautiful PLACE.

The world is a BEAUTIFUL place.

I know.

I know.

That’s what climate deniers see

outside their car windows in country sides

during their Sunday afternoon outings

playing I Spy and singing patriotic songs,

the father’s bass grounding the sopranos

in “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory”

and “America the Beautiful.”

It’s true.  Looking out train windows, I see

beauty in the Hudson River Palisades—

tall, stark, grand—these cliffs seem to be the west

bank of the river bed.  At least from here

no bottles and no dead fish are visible.

Maybe none are there.  Maybe the trees are

thick as they look—at least no fires burn.

I take picture after picture

The world is a beautiful place!

Absolutely

The world IS a BEAUTIFUL place

The world is a BEAUTIFUL PLACE.

Saying so makes it seem other places

exist—other places besides this world

which out this window looks so beautiful.

Out other windows may be floods and fires

and pestilence and hunger which distort

what climate deniers know to be true.

But world is like an elephant

in front of blind men trying to see it.

World is an elephant with various

climates and terrains, with gravity,

with tears for its sick and dying children

and hope for its precarious balance.

This, too, is beautiful: the ways our world

tries healing and remembering, the ways

our world holds impressions and roots and bones,

the ways our world makes fossils and amber

and fuel and mountain ranges, and the ways

our world rages and gauges its own skin

with razor-like toe nails and with rock slides

and fire, water and howling sounds of grief.

Our world’s loss of patience is beautiful.

It’s beautiful from behind clear windows

where tourists sit to take pictures to post

on social media.  So beautiful.

For Sumana's prompt

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The World Is A Beautiful Place

My blog poems are rough drafts.

lease respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Dreaming in Flags

United Nations members' national flags
(Tom Page, photo)

U

Flags wait for dark.  Then their silken fabric

slides off their poles and drapes wonder

around me and passersby—carnival

of startling color and design.  Coats of

arms and arms in coats fill the avenues

in Philadelphia and New York City.

I see my two homes have swathed me in blue

with seals of state under a cape striped red

and white.  My Phrygian cap is blue with.  

white stars.  Eagles look out from each long sleeve,

while horses prance on shirt front and back

with sailing ships and plows and crops and wreaths. 

Mythic women face each other down each

pants leg: Liberty holding up her torch

while standing on a crown, and blind-folded

Justice holding up her sword, balancing
a scale.  To my surprise, I am joyful

and light-hearted—not heavy with history.

With so much to enjoy, who could be sad?

Empty poles line the streets, but people walk in

silky colors.  We clash only in hue.

In dream we practice each other’s dance steps,

cooperate with rescues and welcomes.

Tensions vanish when we take down our flags.

For my prompt at Poets United Midweek Motif ~ National Flag(s)

USA

Pennsylvania

New York

 My blog poems are rough drafts.

lease respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Hiding Wilderness

Amazon Rain Forest (photo by Brazilian things)

One acre of the woods I never set foot in,

holding the wilderness so sacred I surmised

that curiosity would remove its magic—

that wildness once seen is wild no more forever.

You nod. “Yes, animals need the space.” But no, it

was for wild, for wildness itself, not for animals

that I preserved it.  Oh, certainly animals

could use it and love it— but not the human ones.

Look at the wearing down of public places, and

consider whether we must see them to believe?

You say "If no one sees trees stand tall in forests,

the trees do not exist."  I say the opposite:

Wilderness exists when it’s unseen—undisturbed—

I dare only peek. Once shared and tale told,

then more look, and slowly wilderness seeps away,

wildness slowly leaves and takes its secrets with it.

"What good is it?" you laugh, "If we can't use it?"

We know it's there, that's enough. Like money in the bank.

Like heaven, or like God.  Perhaps like our souls,

belief matters.  Allow wilderness to exist.

You pause, but then assert, "It shouldn't matter, then,

whether it is real or not.  Belief is enough."  

Ah, what will convince you?  Wilderness will not be

imitated or reproduced.  Hold it sacred.

For Sumana's Prompt at Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Wilderness

My blog poems are rough drafts. 
Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Who Praises the Seed?

source

 

Who praises the sunflower

when its seeds hide underground?

Who praises scenic artists

when actors take their bows?

How easy to overlook

the greatness in creation

if neither heroism

nor fame provide elation.

Myths, legends and folk tales grow

to make the invisible

visible, to laud the One(s)

we see as original.

Time then to tell stories of

hidden witness and cycles,

of workers and protestors,

of ones who face tough trials.

Those who show up have greatness

as much as yearly seasons,

those healing and those cooking,

those standing up as beacons.

Let’s see the squash in the seeds

as we plant four per hill, see

the artistic products

in our creative ideas.

 For my prompt Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Greatness

My blog poems are rough drafts. 
Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Wildness in the City

Philadelphia seen from the Art Museum

Trees line the avenue

that leads to city hall.

Lovely to look at, but

don’t let them fool you. 

Only ancient ones speak tree—

those deep in wild-way parks

and in the spacious yards

of once stately mansions.

Car fumes and cigarette

smoke choke up newer ones—

though birds do their best to

restore their consciousness.

We try, too.  We befriend

them, hug and confide in

them, needing tree wisdom

and wild companionship.

Maybe they need us as

much as we need them.

Once, one stirred in my arms

and refreshed my tired soul.

For Sumana's Prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ City

My blog poems are rough drafts. 
Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast