A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain
Seeking Truth in Stories
Sometimes it’s story time. Now and then I’ll share a short story here, some of my own, and links to stories of others.
My father-in-law had to land a
Small plane in a rutted field in
Africa—engine failure.
He learned later friends prayed,
Woken in the night
By unseen Hand.
Alliance,
Spirit-
Bound.
(I tried a nonet today–a nine line poem with nine syllables in the first line, reduced by one in each line. This story of Kraig’s dad has a lot more to it, but this distilled form hits the heart of it, I think.)
In third grade, in a missionary kid school on the other side of the globe,
My friend Sara and I discovered
We had distant relatives
Who had been enemies—
Or at least opponents.
She had the advantage—Abraham Lincoln touched her line.
My great-grandmother
had been something like
Second-cousin-once-removed
To the opposition.
I remember my awe at Sara’s brush with greatness,
Yet I wondered:
How could she be related to Lincoln,
Since her family
was from Washington State?
I was little concerned over my notorious ancestor.
My teachers read more interesting stories:
Great inventors like George Washington Carver
Who made a whole feast out of peanuts,
And dreamers like Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Whose name I knew before Martin Luther’s.
It was much more interesting that Sara and I were friends
While our distant relatives had fought,
And that somehow the Davis nose
Passed to my great-grandmother
And to my mother.
Relations are sometimes relative.
(No form today–I decided to throw caution to the wind and go with free verse. It was very freeing ☺. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, along with some photos for reference. It’s so interesting to me how memories work. Will I be vilified for mine, or does friendship outweigh distant relations?)
For every trip we take
We always check the map;
We browse all routes to navigate
And choose the fastest lap.
If we hit the road in time
And circumvent delay,
We’ll keep our plan, our paradigm,
And hold the narrow way.
But best-laid plans go wrong
When roads or weather fail,
Or accident or flat prolong
Our nicely mapped out trail.
Yet when we don’t complain
And take another road,
Adventure waits on new terrain
(Alluring episode)
For maps can show the streets
But they only go so far.
Sometimes it’s in off-beat retreats
That’s where the stories are.
(Today we got a flat tire, so I ended up writing this poem while I waited for it to get fixed. It’s amazing how fast the time flew by! I copied the rhyme scheme and meter from a poem that the kids and I read yesterday: “The Man He Killed,” by Thomas Hardy.)
Nobody really lives
Out the truth of nihilism,
Though many believe there’s no
Reason for why life is like it is,
And they focus on the chaos,
Not recognizing the Designer who
Dares to make the intricate puzzle pieces of creation
Out of a much bigger picture, of which
My mind can only grasp a piece at a time.
(This is yesterday’s prompt and poem: Puzzle Pieces. I decided to do an acrostic poem, and I had nihilism on my mind because we just discussed it today in the worldview class I teach at our local homeschool co-op. You could say this poem is my push against the deep dark hole of this worldview.)
What’s another word for fam’ly?
Kin, nat’rally!
How about when souls link lyrics?
Kindred spirits?
Are there other connections, too?
Jesus, me, you…
I do hope that upon review
You’ll see a relation between
This family both seen and unseen:
Kin, nat’rally, kindred spirits, Jesus, me, you.
(All of these poems for November Poem a Day are rough, but I’d place bets that this one is just plain awful. I did have fun playing with another form, though–this one is the Ovillejo, a form created by Miguel de Cervantes in the late 1500’s. I have a feeling he handled it much more successfully than I have!)
I don’t remember the first phone in my life, back in Pennsylvania,
But I know it would have had a dial—insert the finger, feel the drag, let it spin—
Click-click-click, a click per count.
I do remember the phone we had in the Philippines:
It sat at the top of the stairs,
Connected to our landlord’s line on the other side of the duplex wall,
Used on very rare occasions.
Then to Michigan—this one mounted on a wall—
Dial eventually surrendering to a touch pad (but still digit clicking),
Then a wireless shoe-sized receiver.
Meanwhile there was Grandmom’s phone back in Pennsylvania,
Dial kept as long as her strong, arthritic fingers could force it (a long time),
But she finally accepted the touch pad with the inch-wide buttons.
When I married, we had a phone on the wall, a new number,
And a long, long cord for maneuvering, and tangling.
Then Keren was born, and wrangling the payphone at the hospital after her surgeries
Convinced us it was time for our first cell phone—
A solid silver wedge with a tiny gray screen
And costly texts.
Then there was the next cell phone,
Then the next,
How many now?
Each seems sleeker and more lovely,
A world in our hands,
Yet each loses its savor within months…or weeks.
Meanwhile I can still feel the old telephone dial,
How it dragged
And click-click-clicked each number.
I never knew I would miss it.
(I wrote this up late last night, so came back to edit it today and post it. I tried out what’s called a list poem–it’s basically exactly what it says, a list of things, with flexibility. The prompt of telephone got me thinking of all of the phones I’ve had in my life, and the changes with time.)
As a kid, I loved to draw and
Created stories with characters who
I met in other tales. Who knows
How much these stories formed me, but
There is no question that
Many fairy tales you
Grew up on have
Been the roots of stories that have come
To me. As I said, I used to
Draw my stories—often royal
Princesses under enchantment or in low position,
In need of rescue by a prince, for
That was the most romantic. Such
Tales I loved, and I still have a
Soft spot for reading and writing them, because over time
I’ve realized there is a truth there, as
Old as the Rescuer whose story has always been this.
“And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this.” ~Esther 4:14b
(Today was “Form Friday” so I used a poetic form again, but this time I chose from two suggested. I picked the Golden Shovel, which borrows a quote (referenced at the end of mine). Each line of the poem ends with a word from the quote so if you read down the end of the lines you’ll see the quote. The poem doesn’t have to relate to the quote at all, but I’m hoping my does in a way…)
The vibrant chatter crowds the table and
I gaze at each face as
Back and forth ideas bounce, collide, spark;
My mind wanders, pondering this family of mine,
Eyes alight, and mouths open wide to laugh, to speak,
While outside the window, evening tiptoes in,
Dinner conversation is at its peak,
And I marvel at its beauty.
(I had a bunch of fun with this one! I tried out a contrapuntal poem–the idea is that there are actually three poems in one here. You can read the whole thing through and it works, but then read lines 1, 3, 5, & 7, and then go back and read lines 2, 4, 6, & 8. And then let me know if you can see how the two mini poems are in parallel.)
The road between our home and family Runs over Mississippi River ways. We push the current flowing tip to toe, Our fight to keep connections clear and free. As water runs, the trek would last for days; By car the road is sixteen hours or so. We’ve driven this some ten or twenty times, A circuit as complete as blood pathways. As generations come and go, I know The route of life will change, but God designs This flow.
(For today’s poem I tried out a curtal sonnet, created by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Now if only I could write as beautifully as him! I’m also having issues with layout posting–I’m still figuring out ways and means for these posts.)
Because life isn’t busy enough (cough! cough!), I decided to jump in with some friends and take on the November Poem a Day challenge. I tried it once in 2015 when we lived in Guadalajara, and there are some fun memories from those poems. You can check those out here.
Poetry is not my forte, but I do enjoy playing with words, and with poetry forms. I’ve also found that I write more when I have a specific external goal, so here we are! This will be my landing page, and each day I’ll add a link to the day’s poem. Each day I’m using a prompt from The Poetry Pub.
November 1~ “Hello”
November 2~ Currents
November 3~ Parallel
November 4~ Form Friday: Golden Shovel
November 5~ Telephone
November 6~ Kin
November 7~ Puzzle Pieces
November 8~ Reading a Map
November 9~ Distant Relative
November 10~ Alliance
November 11~ Form Friday: Villanelle
November 12~ Communion
November 13~ Eye Contact
November 14~ Public Transportation
November 15~ Twins
November 16~ Network
November 17~ Harmony
November 18~ Form Friday: Cento
November 19~ Different Language
November 20~ Around the Table
November 21~ Heart-to-Heart
November 22~ Tightrope
November 23~ Roots
November 24~ Chains
November 25~ Form Friday: Renga
November 26~ Sticky
November 27~ Numinous/Thin Places
November 28~ Syzygy
November 29~ Convergence
November 30~ “You too?”
