During lock down I have been offering

an eight week ‘Poetry for wellness’ experience via Zoom. Me and two friends have been communing around some poems and themes offered by Lisa DeVuono (and others) in their wonderful new ‘Peer Facilitators Manual’. At the end of each week we have written spontaneously for 15 minutes and then shared snippets with each other (to further feed our ensuing weeks).

As I come to write up and share the final email with my two compatriots I have re-met these offerings. For a record of my journey over the eight weeks I have curated glimpses of my spontaneity within those 15 minutes of free flow writing below. What a privilege and what beauty my two friends offered, it is a shame I cant post all of their offerings, but during the first week we offered lines of our writing to each other which formed a group poem:

Initial group poem

Simple things in life, melt in.
Is this my child speaking and waiting?

I plant seeds for salad to eat soon and
I plant a tree that will bear fruit next year.

The harvest of an endless crop
The translucent sunbeam through the trees
Teasing new shoots to grow.

This life is an invitation to melt in.

Week three: On self-compassion

Unforgiving
drunkenness
crawls within me.

Week four: Making it real

Shutting out the world
is really
not an option
it has never been
it comes in glorious floods
sensations, opportunities and creations beyond
my wildest imagination.
Maybe I can be gentle enough
Featherlike enough to, let this newness
fall
and rest in my hands.

Week five: Overcoming obstacles

If

I embrace
this
Unknowing
maybe I
can ease
into my growing

and while

facing
the Sunshine
maybe
I will
emerge

more

clearly.

Week six: Creating Hope

Together
we are
melting fatigue
by
swaying on the branches of impulse
launching songs
entraining sirens of newness
we are
Together.

Week seven: Being in gratitude

To become released, to become more open, flowing even.
To hide and be happy.
To appear and be happy.
To be resourced and tearful and gratefully imprinted like Gibran, with his
‘Tear and a Smile.’
To allow the tears and be gentle.
To find the light, like my old friend Shuntaro Tanikawa.
The light in the darkness and darkness in the light.
To celebrate re-finding old friends, who I have neglected for so long.
Shuntaro, you have taken second,
third and fourth fiddle to Rumi and Hazarat, Gibran and Neruda
but now your ’62 Sonnets’ press in on my pen.
With silence my companion,
Floating the river of Melancholy,
Coca-cola Lessons,
The Traveller, The Naif, Watashi. All yours, signed sealed
and delivered to my bookshelf.

And ah, At Midnight In The Kitchen I Just Want To Talk To You.

Yes, tomorrow my friend, If I should be so lucky, we too shall talk again.

Week eight: Self care and endings

I am wondering where to go now
where to go now,
how to grow
How to move freely
Breathe more deeply
Love with an openness that
is all mine, an otherness that
is all yours, a togetherness
combining to stop time.

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