This month Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington poets are participating in National Poetry Writing Month. Every day we will offer up a new poem by a writer in our community. Check back after 6:00pm for the Prompt of the Day and the selected resulting poem.
Write a poem that uses repetition. You can repeat a word, or phrase. You can even repeat an image, perhaps slightly changing or enlarging it from stanza to stanza, to alter its meaning.
Day 26 by Lisa Meuser
This breath
Including the space
behind the thoughts,
behind
all that is happening.
Notice,
return
to what is
behind the space that
holds it all.
I find breath.
Breath
finds me.
The needs
of her
him
them.
Deadlines.
Can I do it all?
In comes breath.
I return again,
trusting the one thing,
the stillness that coexists with,
holds within it, everything.
Breath.
First this.
Breath.
Then that.
Breath.
First today,
Breath.
then tomorrow,
Breath.
My mind jumps
and then returns,
back to now.
This cup of tea.
This client. This email.
This carpool.
This meal, timed right for kathrynn’s busy schedule.
And again, and again, this breath.
How complicated is a breath?
it is deliciously simple.
This moment,
this breath.
This task,
this breath.
I have been training all my life
for this moment,
for this breath,
for this moment of participation
with life.
Breath.
Will I accept this invitation?
Can I participate in this moment fully,
like the woodpecker who is
fervently engaged in breakfast, with all her being?
Does later exist to her?
Breath.
I feel the space holding it all,
and something trusts,
not the outcome, or
success, or
what will happen, only that
happening will continue.
This breath will too.
This breath.