Everyone Has a Story

 Meditations upon reading Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.'s Gay Poems for Red States:

Everyone has a story. Everyone has pain. Everyone has fear. Everyone gets scared. Everyone has doubts. Everyone has obstacles. Yes. Some people’s obstacles and pain are objectively, measurably worse than others. Being unable to walk in a world built for walking people. Being black or brown in a society so deeply based on whiteness that white people never have to think about being white. Being LGBTQ+ in a world where every religion every society is grounded in the idea of male/female dichotomies and relationships.  Being non-Christian in a society that is drenched in the forms (if not the deep ways) of Christianity. These are objective obstacles. But they are not the only obstacles. They are not the only pains.

Everyone has a story that should be heard. No one story should be privileged over any other story. Giving others the right to be heard, to be seen does not silence other stories. Stories can co-exist. So much of what we see now feels like people whose stories have been privileged for hundreds of years, are feeling that somehow their story will be erased by new ones. They won’t be. The fear is baseless. We are all richer by having more stories, more flavors, more colors, more modes of being.

The best thing about hearing more stories, is suddenly discovering that there are many, many people out there with similar (and yet unique) stories. Women discovering “me too” was a revelation. Adults finding similarities to others childhood stories and realizing, ah, that’s why I was different as a child (previously undiagnosed neurodivergence, or PCOS, or gender dysphoria, or many other obstacles).

We learn about others from their stories. We learn about ourselves by being free to tell our stories and by seeing little pieces of ourselves, our emotions, our fears, our anxieties, in the stories of others. Our enemies have stories. We need to hear our enemies’ stories too. We have to know them as people with stories. We do NOT have to privilege their stories over ours, but their stories have a right to exist.

Everyone has a story.

A good society is one that is open to all the stories. 

 

A Valentine Wish

May you make peace
with all your past,
forgive yourself
let go the weight
and rise on wings
to dance in snow
and pipe your music
to the stars.

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 08

January 8, 2014

On the porch

where feral cats

daily find their food

are unexpected

delicate traces

left by feathered guests.

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 04

January 4, 2013

Contrails streak the evening deep

no less wondrous and lovely

than shooting stars.

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 01

January 1, 2014

tiny cat snores

emanate

from some hidden nook

enveloping my desk

in warm, somnolence.

sgreerpitt

Indigo Bunting - Woven Dreams "Blue"

Indigo Bunting

More elusive than happiness,
more rare than desire,
seconds on a fence
engraved forever
in memory only,
Passerina cyanea,
bluest bluebird of all.

sgreerpitt
Sunday February 10, 2013
Photos by others http://www.pbase.com/dadas115/indigo_bunting


for more creativity on the theme of "Blue" check out Woven Dreams http://wovendreamsprompts.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/woven-dreams-prompt-1-blue/

Winter Meditations

I have always liked winter. When I was a child in California, winter was when the rains came and the hills turned green instead of brown. I liked wearing sweaters and wool more than I liked sundresses.

The thing that I have come to love best about winter is the bareness of the trees. In winter the architecture of the world is easier to perceive. I have always seen a parallel between the world in winter and human life in times of stress and difficulty.

I did not always take comfort in that revelation. When I was young I focused on frailty, on loss.

For the winds are bitterly iced
between trees that,
having lost their summer leaves,
are no longer seen as intertwined,
but only tenuously touching a few brittle twigs
here and there;
solitary in a gray world that prevents
even the insubtantial companionship
of a shadow.
December 11, 1972

As a young person I perceived (often falsely) the failure of friendships to survive stress. I mistook temporary solitariness for abandonment.

Over the years, however, I have come to cherish winter as a time of bareness and spareness. Living as I have now for many years with woods and forest all around, winter is a time when the world opens up, when secrets are revealed. Having seen more of human life,  and where once I saw bleakness and abandonment, today  I see strength, resiliance and people reaching out. It is in the hard and cold times that people draw together, offer each other support.

In winter
nature drops her disguises,
forest opens to sky,
rock cliffs are bared,
sheltering leaves fall away,
wind whistles through
tenuously touching twigs.

Walking the forest floor
one sees further, more clearly,
steps more surely
among rocks and fissures.
November 2, 2008

It is interesting to me that I used the phrase "tenuously touching" in both poems - an unconscious echoing. But there is a tenuous drawing away and a tenuous reaching outward. It is the latter I perceive today.

 

a shoe in the road
straddling the yellow line
its mate fifty feet ahead
lying on its side
a testament to
what?
loss or joy?

sgreerpitt
July 6, 2012

April is National Poetry Month

Learned this morning from a friend on Facebook that this month, April, is National Poetry Month.  You can learn more about the official celebrations here: National Poetry Month- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

Poetry has been very central in my life since my 12th birthday in 1963. My father gave me a 300 page book, The Golden
Treasury of Poetry, selected and with a commentary by Louis Untermeyer, and illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund.

A few years ago, I retrieved the book from my parents and brought it back home to Kentucky with me.  I've been enjoying discovering both remembered and unremembered poems.  My adult tastes in poetry are rather different  from the mostly rhyming poetry of this book. Once I discovered e e cummings and Carl Sandburg in high school, my poetic preferences underwent a tectonic shift, but I have enjoyed reading the poems in this Treasury especially out loud (to the amusement of my cats, and the occasional irritation of my husband). From the story poems of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to the limericks of Lear and everything in between, I enjoy the melodic lilt of the words.

first draft

Was driving home in the pouring rain (remnants of Lee) from my weekly shopping trip, and the first few lines of a song came to me. Had to stop the car - twice - to write them down as they came to me (seem to have lost my little tape recorder in our move last winter). Here's the first draft. Now all I need is a musician with a tune!


Here am I.
Here are you.

We thought that love
Would see us through,
Why couldn’t we
Both be true?

We never knew
Life was so tough,
That hearts and flowers
Weren’t enough.

Then jobs were lost
And bills unpaid,
The dreams we planned
Became unmade.

You went off
to right the wrongs,
while I stayed home
to sell my songs.

I never knew
Why you came back,
Was it for me,
Or what you lacked?

Life burdened you
Down so low,
Did you think
You could not go?

So here we are
Within the dark,
Reaching out
To find that spark.

A lesser life
Than what we cared,
But together wiser
Than we dared.

©sgreerpitt
Monday 5 September 2011

waning moon

Waning moon

Scythe sharp
Brilliant crescent
Nestles among
Dark pines
Lacing hilltops.

sgreerpitt
Tuesdy July 5, 2011







"waning moon" poem and painting by sgreerpitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com/.

One Single Impression -- Seven Sins

immune to prayer
-unlike gods-
implacable nature
punishes sins,
greed and pride,
with civilizations'
demise.


"sins against nature" by sgreerpitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com/.

Check out the poetry of other writers responding to this prompt at One Single Impression.

It has been more than a year (one year and three months almost to the day) since I last posted a poem for One Single Impression. I'm not entirely sure why I stopped. This morning, I decided it was time to get those creative juices flowing again. When I went to the OSI site, however, I was a bit dismayed at this week's prompt "seven sins," as I don't believe in "sin" in any conventional sense, nor in a parent-like god that personally assigns punishments in some afterlife for sinful behavior.

My belief is in a transcendent, omnipresent, everlasting power in the universe that is expressed through an inexorable physics of matter and energy that governs all activity and relationships. In this universe actions have consequences, some positive, some negative, some devastatingly destructive and some breathtakingly creative. There are no excuses, no pardons, no exceptions, no bargains to be struck or deals to be made. We either work with the power of the universe or we struggle against it. We can fool ourselves - indeed whole civilizations can fool themselves - thinking that we can do whatever we want, because consequences in reality are often incremental and slow, and do not manifest themselves until years, even centuries later.

I'm not just talking about man's relationship to the physical world, although that is upper most in my mind at the moment. This applies in to human interaction as well. There are universal issues and conditions, cooperation, trust, honesty, competition, sharing, exchange, truthfulness, and many others, that operate in the same inexorable way. To gain trust, one must trust, and behave in a trustworthy manner; violate these principles and trust erodes and disappears.

So on reading the prompt, I thought, perhaps it's time to think about a new set of seven "sins", related to these laws of the universe. However, after pursuing Wikipedia's discussion of the Catholic Church's seven deadly sins, I've decided that properly understood the original list really does encompass all the things I'd been thinking about.

a year of small stones - 016

unmistakeable fragrance
of summer rain
on hot, dry lawns
and dusty leaves.


sgreerpitt
Friday June 10, 2011

"small stone 016" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

a year of small stones - 016 Snow Blossoms

Snow Blossoms


Overnight
blackberry brambles
have bloomed
in frothy frozen white
presaging May’s
softer blooms.


sgreerpitt
Monday March 28, 2011

"small stone 016 Snow Blossoms" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

a year of small stones - 014

pale, dry, ghost leaves
illuminate
winter forest understory.

sgreerpitt
Wednesday January 19, 2011

"small stone 014" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project

a year of small stones - 013

approach-avoidance:
feral cats,
only three left now,
gather at the appointed time
only to scatter
at the opening door.

sgreerpitt
Tuesday January 18, 2011

"small stone 013" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project

a year of small stones - 012

the slow, sullen drip
of a recalcitrant
January thaw.

sgreerpitt
Monday January 17, 2011

"small stone 012" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project

a year of small stones - 011

more intricate than finest
Belgian laces
winter forest filigree
frames evening sky.

sgreerpitt
Saturday January 15, 2011

"small stone 011" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project

a year of small stones - 010

high altitude
aeronautic crossstitch
embroiders sunset.

sgreerpitt
Saturday January 15, 2011

"small stone 0010" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project

a year of small stones - 009

switching tails,
rasping cries,
heads move in unison;
Mrs. Cardinal
flies.

sgreerpitt
Monday January 10, 2011

"small stone 009" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

Part of the "river of stones" project

Photo of Tippecanoe, Tyler Two, Samatha and Eli.