Writer's Circle Prompt: Earth

 
Earth Collage
1.
I read through all my poems
to find references
to earth.  I find some
I scoop up and hold
In one hand.
 
In my other hand I hold
a small blue marble
earth as if I could see
home from a spaceship
in the solar system.
 
2.
Before bicycles
took over, entire
villages lived in
our broken gravel
driveway
 
We carved out
Intersections and
roads meticulously
with the side of our hands
 
For the routes of
die-cast cars, vans
and scratched-paint
pick-up trucks.
 
Plastic tracks on rugs
couldn’t compete
with our dirt tracks,
scratched knees
 
And smudged shirts
from making and
remaking our towns
after anger stomped
 
Or real cars rolled
them away
like sand paintings
in the winds of time.
 
 
3.
Back when I was sane
I labored at the Mum Farm.
No.
Back when I was insane
I labored at the Mum Farm
to find what I had lost.
No. 
It's hard to tell the truth.
 
Back then I found myself
squatting between rows of color,
knees and hands brown from being
kind to roots and buds while
upper teeth held my bottom lip
 
Back then, sweat from my forehead
moistened my forearms, my shirt stuck
to my back, and my hands found
the healing heart of Mother Earth.  
 
4.
Look at my body riddled with 70 years of scars
that I sanitize and cover with clothes.
Broken, I resemble earth or any one of its
family. I take my place between a rabbit
and a dogwood tree. Two of three of us siblings
move purposefully away from home and homeward,
while the stationary one grows up, down, and out
from its center, never detaching from Mother.
Mother Earth and Father Sky—that's what
I call them—embrace all their children.
I don't wiggle away defiantly, but claim my home,
where Earth and Sky know me holy
alongside wrens and other flying things,
alongside trees and fruits of flowers' labor, too.
Nothing stops them—not scars, clothes, nor my attempts
to disguise my brokenness. Let me, then, accept
this now wholly, embrace earth and sky and siblings
as they are, and open my heart to the moment's
beauty beyond truth, its joy beyond grief.
Together, we erode. We grow. And we evolve.
 
5.
I was closest to earth
when I owned a piece of it
and lived amid maple trees
wisteria and lilacs.
 
Outside I added rhoddies, roses,
pine trees, and a pink dogwood tree.
My hands were soiled from planting tomatoes,
peppers, and lettuce.  My sneakers were green
from mowing the front and backyard lawns.
 
Inside, I lived near all the windows:
360 degrees of weather
360 degrees of day and night
360 degrees of earth life
Flying, running, and tunneling.
 
 
Now my windows have 120 degrees to the southeast
with dawn, morning light, and afternoon shadow.
Magnolia trees and parking lots outside my windows,
A blessed garden down 2 elevators in back.
 
My clean hands hold poems
and one blue marble.
I am at home on earth.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

A Writer's Circle Prompt.

Please respect my copyright. 

 

Writing Circle Prompt: fire

 

A poem of fires

 

A poem is a series of brief fires.

The colors of autumn’s maple and aspen trees

condensed into word images.

 

Yellow, red and blue above the match I hold

and growing in the fireplace when wood catches

or in the burner of the gas stove.

 

And beyond all words, the urban fires

jumping from rooftop to rooftop, 

and forest fires leaping tree to tree.

 

The fires of war’s intentional death

burning innocent bodies and souls.

(Is this what Baldwin meant by “The fire next time”?)

 

Wait! 

We light candles against the dark

and for celebrating the miracles of light

and for remembering dead ones.

 

We see the fire of miracles like burning bushes

and other visions, the fireworks

of finding the way.

 

We see the fire of the sun and other stars,

fire impossible to imagine

unless as small and fast as a comet,

 

or reflected off the moon or lake

something that can’t be raked

unlike the gold and red of autumn leaves.

 

Yesterday the sky was afire

with Northern Lights—a marvel

so far south of the magnetic north.

 

Over the aspens and maples, the green and red

of aurora borealis reminds us

of a poem. 

 

                                                          My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Writers Circle Prompt: The Holy Water Cycle

 

source

In code, we call our planet earth.

Indeed, that’s what I stand upon

and keep sight of, even when

in water.  I who seek the shore

for solace forget we could call

our home ocean, the larger part,

which overwhelms and mystifies.

Is gravity enough to keep

water in place? I wonder, then

marvel at the water cycle

and its sun-driven processes*

in words that roll off of my tongue: 

From any reservoir, water

evaporates and condenses,

precipitates, infiltrates,

runs off surfaces and gathers

again, molecules waving to

each other and bringing their trash

with them, baggage renewed each day.

 

Our bodies are also water

reservoirs, yet we focus on

the solid parts and overlook

our correspondence with the earth,

code name of our planet home.

Each minute we undergo it.

The water cycle. I want to

sound those two words as holy.  As

they are: Water Cycle.  Music

in my eardrums.  I hear the pulse

clearly when water’s in my ears,

when my fingers are in my ears.

This most amazing invention

of God and nature, unceasing

water cycle.  I don’t always

love it like I should when I thirst

or when my bowels want to burst—

and yet I would pledge allegiance

to it in a minute if faith allowed.

 

Faith lets me affirm holiness

and thus recognize water cycle

at the core of my belief.   God

exists. What grand design! Water

Cycle.  The words are code for life

on earth, for gills to breathe and for

seasons that transform it into art.

Nature is the first artist, first

Bible—creator of all we

long to imitate in science

and art and faith. Whew!  Talk about

survival and we talk about water.

Talk about air and we talk of

water.  Talk of dry land and talk

water.  Water Cycle.  Water

music.  Walking on water.   Prayer.

If you don’t stand up whispering

water cycle with reverence,

I have failed at this holy dance.

 

 #

 

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

A Writer's Circle Prompt.

Please respect my copyright. 

 

 

Writers Circle Prompt: West Athens-Limestreet Fire Company - Athens, NY

 

source

The West Athens-Lime Street Fire Company was organized on March 13, 1952, and firehouse #1 was built in 1954.  A brand new 500 gallon pumper was its first truck.   In the 1970s it added a second firehouse to serve the southern part of West Athens and provide mutual aid. to 6 other Green County fire companies in three neighboring towns.

Our family engaged with this volunteer organization from when we first moved to Athens in 1958.  I was 7.  I remember my Dad rushing out to the sound of the alarm, whether it was the monthly Saturday drills or an actual fire.  Mom joined the Ladies Auxiliary, and I watched her put on an apron for serving the pancake breakfasts and chicken dinners.  The fire engine backed out to leave a space for setting up tables.  She and Dad went to dinner dances there, leaving us with our grandparents or a neighbor.  I also remember a yearly bazaar right near the main drag—9-W.  Dad ran the booth where he set up a basket at a 45* angle.  For a quarter you could get three softballs to land in it.  Not easy.  My dad could do it though, and often demonstrated.  I helped, collecting the missed balls and returning them to my Dad until I was nearly hit with a wildly thrown ball.

In my teen years, the company held monthly teen dances and sock hops in firehouse #1.  That’s where I heard Little Eva’s “Do the locomotion” and the Stones “I can’t get no satisfaction” for the first time.  We taught each other line dances, and individual dancing like the jerk and the swim.  Music depended on popping a center into the small 45s that we teens brought with us. 

I moved away from the area in the late 1960s, returning only to visit family.  The firehouses and community faded from my awaereness. I knew my older brother had joined the company along with my father and mother, and little more.   But in the last several years it came back into focus when dad died in 2019 at the age of 93, and mom died this year at age 99.   Many who attended their funerals were young and old members of the fire company.  A few weeks later memorials for each of them were held at the second firehouse.  Dad, who had been Fire Commissioner for several years, had the ceremonial “final call,” where the fire company stood at attention while the fire alarm rang.  Mom’s included the biggest spread of sandwiches and desserts I’ve ever seen at the firehouse.  Both included slide shows of their lives.  Good memories were shared by all.

I understand that Mom’s Memorial might be the last event held at the old firehouses, as a new firehouse is under construction to replace the two smaller ones.  But the volunteer organization has been a part of my family for 66 memorable years.  I’ll be forever grateful.

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© 2024 Susan L. Chast

A Writer's Circle Prompt.

Please respect my copyright. 

Writers Circle

 

Writers Circle Presents:

A Celebration of Creative Minds

 

Emcee: Sondra Butler Thompson

Priscilla Shaffer              Behind the Scene

Judy Ballinger                Poems: My Contribution for Today: A Bouquet and                  

Lillian Carnahan            An Old Time Halloween

Barbara Mitchell           Poems: Seasons of Jazz                       

Mariana Eckardt           Preserving Family Traditions: The Plum Pudding Bowl

Valaida S.  Walker         Momma on the Bus                                                                 by Rosa Lee Smith

Blair Seitz                      Photo Essay: Resident Activities

Ruth Thornton and Bruce McNeel    Music:                                             Sentimental Journey and Misty

Bruce McNeel                I Don’t Trust ‘Em Anymore

George Hatzfeld            Tribute: Remembering my Barber                                         Clem as “the Customer”

Susan Chast                    Poems: Female Character’s Speak:                                     Lady Macbeth and Princess

Phyllis Belk                     Friendship: Am I too Old to Make New Trusted Friends?

Writers Circle Prompt: Work

 

 

When asked about work, for some reason, my mind takes a sharp turn to childhood jobs:  hanging newly washed laundry on the line, hemming skirts and dresses, babysitting, turning over the earth in our early spring gardens, planting seeds, weeding beds, harvesting vegetables and berries, peeling fruits and vegetables for canning—the apples and tomatoes most of all—and raking the autumn leaves that pile up on the lawns.   I’d add high school and college jobs here as well, short order cook and server in an inner city corner store, dishwasher, library aid, proofreader, and envelope stuffer.   

I’m surprised my thoughts take such a turn, because my life calling was to be a teacher, and I spent my entire life teaching—whether high school English, college freshman writing, Quaker Sunday school, or my main love, theatre. In fact, the thing I most appreciate about being a resident at Simpson House is being in the company of so many teachers.

So what do the earlier, childhood jobs have to do with teaching?  I think they have to do with being useful and finding the link between the earth and its people.  Even the college dishwashing, hands gloved and feet standing on wet floors, taking the used dishes from a window that only showed the midriff of each person helped with this learning.  I remember the time I feared I would be fired.  I had dropped a bowl into the garbage disposal, and the entire line ground to a halt.  I picked out the pieces I could see, but couldn’t restart the machine.  My boss came over and switched the breaker on and off, threw up his hands and made a phone call.  By then I was sitting on a wooden chair and crying.  He stood close to me and asked, “Do you think you’ll do that again?”  I doubted I would make the same mistake again.  But I did.  I don’t remember how the line came back on.  I don’t remember cleaning up the mess and leaving a clean kitchen, but I remember walking away thinking that could survive mistakes. I know this was a lesson I learned over and over.

It's awesome and humbling to be human and to work with other humans who, like me, are not perfect but are again and again picking up something they don’t know and attempting it.  Whether to error or to a break through, we carry that spark of liveliness which occasionally rises to the sublime.

Each task is a sea / raging and pulling at me / I love being on earth.

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© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Please respect my copyright. 

Writers Circle Prompt: A Car Equals Freedom

 

1971 Mercury Capris

I was 24 and in the middle of a tough divorce. My husband had taught me to drive in his deep-green 1973 Karmen Gia, a neat 4-on-the-floor. But I didn’t earn my license until a year later, with my father’s help. That's when I bought my first car for almost nothing--a turquoise VW bug with a black bonnet and green trunk and beautiful magenta pinstriping. The year was 1975, but I don’t remember the year of the car and I don't have a photograph. As soon as I was legal, I packed the VW and moved from Upstate NY to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where I was working on a master’s degree. As my parents would say, I didn’t look back.

To me, right from the get-go, the VW bug stood for independence. I used it between work and school until I had to jump start it, and until I had to manually lift the break pedal to release the brake. And when it died in Middletown a year later, I gave it to people who used it in its two working gears—first gear and reverse— to bring deliveries from the bottom of their hill to the top. Last I saw it, it sat at the bottom of that hill as a container for armloads of chrysanthemums. By then I had bought a dream of a used car—a brown mercury capri with almost 100,000 miles on it.

Those were lean years.  I was a workshop leader of theatre games and improvisation and a beginning director.  Both jobs were volunteer in the evenings and on weekends around the real work which brought in money—at times waitressing, at times substitute teaching.   My first full-time job was as a speed reading and study skills itinerant instructor which brought me to Connecticut and Pennsylvania—all in the safety of the brown Mercury Capri.  I tied a broomstick across the back seat to use as a clothes rack, and lived out of the car.

Freedom.  

When I landed in Philadelphia in 1977, I would often drive around the city and suburbs to become familiar with my new home.  I enjoyed getting lost and then finding myself again.  Once, the capri died at a city stop sign when I was on one of those escapes—or escapades.  I was somewhere in Center City or South Philadelphia, and there was at least 6 inches of snow on the ground.   A man on the far side of age 50 asked me if I needed help.  I asked if he knew where I could use a phone, and he walked me a few blocks to what I remember as a warehouse to use one.

The large room was filling with musicians shedding winter coats and warming up their instruments.  Two of the musicians went with me to push my car to the side of the road.  They explained that they were part of an opera company—or was it a music society?  I no longer remember.  One of them gave me the name of a garage to call—and everyone made me welcome as a visitor.  I think I stayed for 10 or 15 minutes before I felt I should be outside near the car.  The rescue went smoothly, and the garage fixed my car.  

Later when I started thinking through the sequence of events, I realized how dangerous the situation might have been.  My friends were quite concerned that I didn't call them instead of walking into a strange part of the city with a strange man. I suppose I was lucky. But I had felt kindness and honesty throughout my emergency.  I wished I had written down names and addresses, because when I tried to get back to the music hall to thank the men who had helped me, I couldn't find it again.  Now the experience and the disappearance has a magical quality like in the story of Rip Van Winkle, without the intervening 20 years. 

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For an old poem to the VW, see Flagship from 2012.😊

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Please respect my copyright. 

Writers Circle Prompt: A life of Independence

 

 I remember my first glimpse of independence, which was when Mom and Dad drove me to freshman year at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  I don’t remember a word they said, as Polonius-like, they cautioned me on how to behave in my first independent setting.  They said I looked at everything wide-eyed, and I was lost to them.  It may have been so.  I had sisters for the first time—in roommates and lunch lines, study, and play. 

And then there was dating and marriage and divorce—all of which depended on freedom to be and to chose.  All choices of which were radical departures from the paths my parents had chosen for me. 

But the next major event in independence that was a revelation to me was getting my driver’s license and buying my first car.  To move from passenger seat into the driver’s seat was indescribable independence, containing both freedom and control.  I was in control of a private space for the first time, and I could go wherever I wanted to go. 

And, as it turned out, that private space on wheels was a step toward what I really needed in order to feel independent and to pursue the career I wanted to excel in.  Though I had relationships and friendships enough, I moved alone into a room of my own for the first time.  And that is how I lived the rest of my life, in control of my own place and space.  These days I find I hold a little envy for those who have children and grandchildren, but despite a certain amount of loneliness, the freedom—the complete independence—is what nurtured my soul.  It’s as if my brain and spirit expanded into domestic space, leaving my heart free to love freely, and especially let the love of God pour through me toward others.  I think of this when I think of my mother’s motto, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

When my father died and Mom lived alone for the first time ever, lived alone after 72 years of marriage, I offered to help her with the things that come up for a woman alone.  But she took to it like a hummingbird to sugar water.  Her mourning continued in the evenings especially, in the hours after dinner when she missed the companionship of her husband.  During the day, she thrived in her art.  She rearranged the furniture and made a studio space in every room.  She had guests for lunch, she tutored and led small classes in drawing, etching, pastel, and acrylic.  And she lived alone—with aides for mornings and late evenings—up until  three weeks before her death.

 A year before she died, in July 2023, I was staying at my mother’s house during one of Mom's hospital visits.  When she returned home she accepted about 5 days of round-the-clock-care before asking us to leave, by 10 days of round-the-clock care, she demanded that we leave.  Her freedom and independence had become that important to her.  On reflection, I wrote this poem:

I watched her house and she
reach for each other, I felt her cat’s cold
shoulder, and heard sharper questions about
who moved what and why.  I returned home,
humbled, sure again that her nest was hers
and my nest was mine.  At what age do we
stop wanting independence?  In my own
home, cat leaning on my legs, repainting
them with her scent, I know the answer is
never.  Someday, I may have to insist
on assisting, or help her to move.  Someday
I will need someone to do that for me.
Until those days come, I’ll love the nests
we build for our adult selves, neither nestling 

nor child, but ones at home within ourselves.

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Please respect my copyright. 

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Writers Circle Prompt: My spiritual journey

          

Source

          I am restless these days, and less able to create the sustained attention in silence that we liberal Quakers enter for worship--that is, waiting on God in a silent meeting, drawing close in community focus.  Occasionally there is a message for me or through me to others, and faithfully, I stand to deliver it.

          I am restless these days, and find it easier to focus in small groups than in the large weekly meetings.  I'm in two small groups: Experiment with Light and Building Beloved Community.  Experiment with Light was created by Rex Ambler, a British Quaker.  In the experiment, worship is guided so that we each isolate a concern to focus on amid the many we carry; we focus on it and interrogate it in stages; then find a phrase or image that helps us each move forward with solutions or with more clarity.  Those of us who wish to, share what came to us during the guided worship.  

          Building Beloved Community was first a group called Dismantling Systemic Racism.  We function as a support group rather than a worship group, though silence is one of our tools.  Early on we realized that all our verbs and terms were negative, and so we changed our name from Dismantling to Building, Building Beloved Community.  We want to see how positive framing adds to our understanding and ability to change.  We come with our stories and experiences of moments when we are racist or witness racism (with or without intervening).  We discuss both to understand and to find appropriate and positive follow up if any is possible.  

          I am a Jewish Pagan Christian Quaker, a fluid identity that grew over time. As a child I was at home in the woods of the Northeastern USA where I felt the friendship of trees, plants and small animals.  In the woods, I felt protected, and I made sense of many nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and myths.  Next, I lived my father's Judaism for a while, in love with the language and the holidays.  My family celebrated Easter, Passover, Channukah, and Christmas, and I absorbed the stories. Eco-feminist circles of belonging to Gaia and planet earth followed.  I participated in circles of drumming and ritual that some call Wicca. 

          When one day I felt the guidance of God through Jesus, it grew in these rich fields of experience.  I experienced it first at the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice back in the early 1980s.  I had met Quakers there for the first time, and came to admire their steadiness  in the face of controversy.  Controversies included whether or not, and how, to accommodate men and boys, whether to hang the American flag of military fame, and how to stop the erasure of each others' beliefs when it came to pentacles and crosses.  The challenge was to learn how to accept each others beliefs.  I started attending Quaker Meeting and took workshops in Alternatives to Violence.   It became clear to me that the Quaker peace testimony comes from the belief that God is in every human being, a truth implied in all the religions I've experienced. I recognized that my studies and life work were based on true leadings from God, and I began to seek this clarity in decision making and meeting for worship.

           Since the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, my vision of Beloved Community has grown to include most peoples of the earth.  I often ask myself "What would Jesus do?"  This practice helps to stop my racing brain from impulsive responses stemming from old learned patterns.  To me, the church is not a place, but a people.  The doors are open. 

Open Door Vignettes

Love Thyself
Love Thy Neighbor
Shells, the sand, the sea
Gifts of the earth
Butterflies and birds
4-leaf clovers
Nectar of purple-flowered clover
Dogwood trees and flowers
Pine pitch on the climbing tree
Stories
Bible
Fairy tales
Animal tales
Novels
Teenage love poetry
The feel of a hand on skin
The feel of heart beats together
Ram Das and Be Here Now
Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way
Shalom Aleichem
Civil rights
Respect and Rehabilitation

The eyes of a dog
The eyes of a cow
Wicca
Candles, fires, and sweet grass
Gods and Goddesses
Justice
Peace
Love
Jesus says:
"Do not be jealous.  We're all made of the same material, all children of God and earth.  We're made differently so we'll live our own callings in the world.  As I do."

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My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2024 Susan L. Chast