Reset: this next minute is an empty glass
New poems and a moments pause at the turning of the year
Hello everyone!
This share is a much more personal one and I hope just as encouraging and useful for you as the other posts on growing your poetry and being gentle with your creative practice.
I’ve been writing one poem a day with subscribers of Plant Your Poetry on Substack on the theme of ‘Reset’ during January, which is soon coming to a close as we move into a new month and new theme. February also happens to be the month where my baby is due and there is so much in my future that is unknowable and uncontainable.
So much has happened in just nine months, I moved continents for one, got married, and grew towards motherhood with no friends around me. Writing has been my solace and a way to find my way back to myself when I no longer recognize who is looking back in the mirror.
This month of daily writing has grounded me, helped me to find some stillness and peace amongst the reeds, as well as a space to leave my grief at the waters edge.
I hope you enjoy this small collection of January poems that I have picked out for you in the hopes they may soothe and lift whatever your heart is heavy of.
Thank you for being here.
Ten Poems for January
DAY 2 - BLANK
That is what the space named future holds, I see it in my minds eye as a year because of clocks and calendars but it stretches out far beyond the unknown oceans of tomorrow. This next minute is also an empty glass. What to fill it with? How to keep something as it always was? Pour in much of the same. No. I have to reshuffle, take out some cards, mop up some residue, sieve, distil and mix what's left, like a scientist, and what can be, like an artist. That is the equation for growth. That is what the space named future holds, a blank canvas punctuated by the stars - an empty glass.
DAY 3 - SIFT
I've knelt with my knees in the mud
holding a circle, sifting for Gold
Haven't you?
Okay - it was fools gold
on a history trip but I never
put the circle down.
Sifting through rooms of the past,
picking my way through traps,
tiptoeing over trip wire, some rooms
that were created long before
I was pulled into this world.
I've sifted and have been sifted
like small grains of sand, carefully
and cruelly inspected in a palm
to be chosen or tossed back
towards the angry sea.
How to sift through thousands
of collected grains - no-one
has that many years in them.
So there must be something else
we were meant to do.
Crane our creaking necks
up to the horizon and just -
empty our pockets,
kick it back into the nature
of all other things, no piles,
just grains forming a bay
of memories, polished into
the burgeoning distance.
DAY 4 - CLEAR
There are acts we complete:
- we sweep
- we burn old time on bits of paper
- we remove things from sight
- we wash, we use and empty
- we bathe
- we dance to shake off the sap of winter
- we mend and we make
- we weave and we bake
and all the while the snow melts
whilst we work, whilst we busy ourselves
with what is soft and malleable
what we can mold and shape
with our bare hands.
It is a faith - a ritual we perform,
as the Earth thaws and relents,
soaks into her first warm spring bath
full of fresh shoots and fledgling birds
and we, open-mouthed, stand at the door,
face to the sun, and absorb her,
welcome her to fill the rooms
that we have emptied in devotion
of long shadows expanding across
the lawn - to deposit her fleeting treasure.
DAY 7 - EXHALE
The seasons Eye is shifting -
tight knots in the pit of stomachs
unclench as each exhale
carries us closer towards Spring.
I think of travel every day,
more than if it would have been possible.
I day dream on Europe, Japan, Sri Lanka,
Australia to name a few.
For now, it is okay that these places
are only a window in the corner of my eye,
a room with a view that I can visit and taste
the salty air with the tip of my tongue.
Everything is about to change
and it won't do to hold my breath
and brace for impact, I must melt
into the days and months, allow
for the shape-shifter to do her
essential work - if I am to float
downstream and out towards
those tidal dreams.
The seasons Eye is shifting.
DAY 8 - LUCID
Today I choose lucidity,
to invite in the demons of longing
that knock on my door to swirl
and crash about, upending things -
thrusting photos, memories
and attachments at me, ripping them
gleefully into shreds.
And I sit and watch with a cup of tea,
counting how many sips it takes
to drain, toying the cloy texture
around my tongue - the warmth
relaxing my muscles, avoiding
the sharp shard of retreat.
I breathe and soft focus
on everything I associated myself with -
being flung up in the air, tossed out
of the cupboards, ransacked.
I quiz them - what are you looking for?
But they're deaf, too busy
trying to find me huddled in a corner,
sobbing, pleading for them to stop
and leave me alone. This is their call sign.
Over on the chair, watching them,
I am invisible. Like a mother
who silently watches her teenager rage
until they roar themselves hoarse
or the animals that can only wait
for the storm to build, peak, and pass.
Lucidity offers me a light of protection
and so the demons give up,
and I am able sleep - for the long,
longer, longest Winter.
DAY 9 - LATHER
Let the thick fragrant foam
tend to the years of excess
now caking your skin,
use your hands, your holy hands,
to circulate emptiness into your pores,
lather on, strip, strip the body
of any extra weight
that does not nourish but saps.
Become the patient and the disciple
of water, let her flow around you,
no part unkissed. Let her memory
serve yours, lift, extract it's imprint
and allow her to cascade them
down the plughole.
Enjoy the unbecoming,
as the circular motions of your
soapy hands sing their own mantra
of new pastures across your newborn skin.
DAY 10 - SIT
Sit still
and let the lurking wave catch up with you.
You cannot out swim what was born of
what world you are trying to escape from.
Give up trying to make a city love you
by posing like a ventriloquists dummy.
Instead, melt into the floor and cough
the cockroaches out from your lungs.
Don't go dancing, distracting, seeking
to grab a face to replace the reflection
because you can't bear to see it.
Stop sending overly cheery voice notes
where the laughter splatters over the end
of each sentence like a tragicomedy,
no one is laughing. Especially not you.
Listen, and love yourself back home.
Collect each piece of your body scattered
around the bars and clubs and tuck them in bed.
Sit still
and let the lurking wave catch up with you
so the Universe knows where to carry you,
how to keep you afloat.
Let the fish relate to you, see that you too
have scales for skin.
You are no different.
Let life catch up with you, be with you.
How else can you know what you are?
A life raft, a storm passing, a buoy afloat,
born of the same sea you are trying
to outswim.
DAY 21 - PAUSE
I press pause on my life
and all motion ceases,
everything stiffens and glazes.
I can hear my labored breathing
and feel the ache in my chest,
how long has that been there?
When things stop, they often break,
like when my Dad stopped smoking,
which was the beginning of the end -
and now, where am I?
Suspended between the horizon,
pulled and stretched by the moon-tide,
damp from months of treading water.
There is no other way to put it,
I am at sea, drifting on a raft
that has no beginning or end.
The pause is achingly long,
with no sign of relenting -
I don't know if I should survive,
perhaps I haven't, perhaps I am
where people go who never made it
riding on the back of The Great Pause -
and everyone has not ceased to move,
except me.
DAY 23 - FLOAT
Today I floated around women
who spend their every waking day
trying their best to be everything to everyone.
Together, when we shared the guilt,
the anger, the burdens, we all sighed with relief
- you, too?
We are born into this realm to hold up skin
and worlds so others can swim and thrive,
despite the exhaustion.
And no-one asks it of us, directly. No-one
outright says, I need you to become everything
and act like you are nothing - but it is whispered
in so many secret and subliminal ways
when we are too young to know what we signed up for
by simply being born.
And then, when we are diminished
like peppercorns ground down with a twist of the wrist,
suddenly - we are responsible for everything
and must make amends for all of the things
we did not break.
DAY 30 - EXPAND
A limp balloon casing
has the capacity to stretch
five times its regular size
and bring so much joy
into an empty room
that there is no reason
we should deny ourselves
out of the credit they get.
Whilst our skin isn’t made of latex,
we expand beyond all recognition
in soul and body and mind,
in ways that we can’t measure
with the naked eye.
Since we are born,
we are pushing through
the eye of a needle, to survive,
to endure, and soon we will be through,
a thread that moves like silk
between two ends.
If you’d like to join us and receive 365 days of prompts sent straight to your inbox, available as a monthly downloadable and printable calendar, you can upgrade to a paid subscription for just 3.50 a month. You can put the calendar somewhere where you will see it often and tick off the prompts as you go. This is perfect for anyone wanting to gather some writing momentum, share their words with a supportive community and receive encouragement and inspiration.
It also includes a private chat space to share your poems daily and a monthly writing session where we will write on the first prompt of the month and I will share some of my favorite lines and poems from the previous month.
Watch your poetry evolve in ways you never imagined. Let it be the spark that ignites your passion for writing, helps you overcome creative blocks, and keeps your practice fresh and exciting all year long. Make every day a poetic adventure. You deserve it.
I am once again absolutely, amazingly awestruck and that’s just on the first reading. Every one is beautiful. ❤️