Mindful Poetry Virtual Gathering #2

Our second Mindful Poetry Virtual Gathering was an expressive moment shared by 50 of us virtually. Troy Bronsink of The Hive: a Center for Art, Action and Contemplation led us through reading and contemplation of Gregory Orr's "Let's Remake the World with Words." Eddie Gonzalez of The On Being Project led us through our response writing and sharing out to the group. We are so grateful for our partners and for those who were able to participate from all over the US. You can view the full gathering in the video above.

Please join us for our next virtual gathering April 15, we will listen, contemplate and respond to “On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. (To access our daily Mindful Poetry content, simple fill out this brief form and look for a Welcome email from The Well.)

Response Poems
(Share your response poems here.)

Let's Remake the World with Lemons
By: Robert Burack

Let’s remake the world with lemons,
dimpled sour, sweet with sugar,
buttered yellow hanging from the tallest branch.

Let’s wrap you up,
squeeze you out,
zest the edge,
let you dissolve,
and take you in.

Dimpled sweet, sour with sugar,
creamy yellow in the softest hands.


Let’s Remake the World with All the Glitter
By: Manjot Singh

Let’s remake the world with all the glitter
The general stores have to offer
And replace gold and currency with potpourri
Bring lightness back to our heavy clouds
That pour heavy drinks
As if the sky were trying to get us drunk

Let us drink the vitamins of laughter
And friendship
And swim in a lake of geese
Too free to remember who
Displaced them

Let us never forget
How difficult it was to get here
Each time we look at another
We must remember the god
That pumps through every vein

The same god
That granted us a hug
After all these months
As the glitter
Comes streaming down


Let’s Remake the World by Pedaling Faster
By: Eric Brotheridge, After Gregory Orr

Let’s remake the world by pedaling faster
because the Dairy Queen can’t wait
at the end of our bicycle ride.
And the smiles speed brings
to the faces of my daughters
pulled along behind me
makes the circling madness
of my legs make sense.

Let’s “Go faster, Daddy!
so fast that our hair,
rushing behind us,
can’t catch us
and won’t get stuck
in the ice cream.”


Let's Remake the World with the Economics of Kindness
By: Sarah Pinho, after Gregory Orr

Let's remake the world with the economics of kindness
where the person with the most kind heart
has the most job security; in which the person with the highest
number of anonymous kind acts has the highest salary.

Let's
build a world in which selflessness is the currency of
the day, where raw greed is a rare thing to be puzzled
at, and where those who lash out in fear and anger
are provided pillows and peppermint tea and cognitive-behavioral training therapy.

Newborn to the World
By: Kaley Casenhiser

Let’s enter more graciously
Into this litany of firsts.
Let us find comfort in history’s
Memory, resilient and storied,
Imploring us to hope, to see, to seed.

Let us find within us the ancient
Whisper, the tenderness of
Wisdom’s cadence,
And learn it’s language;
To become native to
Presence and the
Soil (the stuff of us)
It inhabits.

Let us pause at the foot of Mt. Horeb,
Still and shaking in the wind,
And wait to be awakened
To Isness again.

The holy is composing and awaiting
our attunement to their symphonic movement:
Her reciprocity, his cosmic mystery
Their trinity of loving withness
Invites the child within us
To rise up, to sing
To be newborn to the world
And all its storied possibilities.

Let us join in the dance
Of truth, goodness, and beauty
And not miss their ever
Surprising partnerings.

Let us greet atonement:
Present with us to heal us
To original wholeness,
Our eternal inheritance.

Now beloveds, may we live
In the rhythm of this dance
And walk, as souls awake,
Planting seeds, and sparing time
To wonder together at the gifts
Ever springing up in this sacred earth.

Bend
By: Emily Little, after Gregory Orr

Let’s remake the world with slowness.
Sap is water, it doesn’t start out as sweet, sticky medicine for pancakes
And if I dumped the sap all I would have is sogginess, a mess.

I’d take the time with his pancake,
The first bite with crisp edges,
airy center,
buttermilk sour for a moment near the end, mixing with gold

gold made from steady Vermont hands.
Hands that hold babies and chainsaws and the paddle that stirs this gold, as it thickens
And becomes herself,
Becomes a treasure.

Let’s bend ourselves over the things that require slowness,
Over skinned knees that know when you rush them,
Over unfurling lettuce, tender and bruiseable,
Over the paper skin of your grandmother, spreading thick cream onto her
back,
Her arms,
Her legs,
Her feet.
Quieting her old cells.

Let us bend ourselves—
Not over backwards
And not in haste, but

Forwards,
In protection of the weak, the abused, the unseen, the tender, the fragile,
And give to them slowness.
That is all they ever wanted.

Let’s remake the world with silence
By: Mahip Rathore

If I were to remake the world with words,
I would have more pauses then words,
More rest than work.
More quiet that sound,
More stops than running around.
More space than things,
More awareness than thoughts
More clay than hardened pots.

When I take a moment and stop,
Taking a breath in, I feel my body
Resting myself in it, I check in
What I gaze into gazes back at me.
Reminding me of my true nature,
Something the mind can’t see.
No words can describe it,
No language can conceptualize it.
Only I can know, what “I” is,
Like only the silence can know what absence of sound is.


The Remaking
By: Sondra Hall

Let's remake the world with words, first.
becuse we all have some within our reach.
Let's remake the world with words of those who aren't often heard—
those of the forgotten, the powerless, the meek, the disenfranchised.
Because remaking means rebuilding and
we are all builders.
Let's remove "the dust of custom" so things shine again,
Because shine is light made visible and
we are all light.
Let's not remake it frivolously,
let us not forget the teaching and the learning.
Because we are all teachers and learners.
Let's remake the world with purpose,
build it wide enough to hold all of our sorrows,
and with enough room for all to lay down and rest
with full hearts
in this world, we have all remade.


Let's Recreate the World with Thread
By: Hannah Conti, after Gregory Orr

The bobbin is wound tightly.
The cotton connective tissue
bonds my heart and clothes
this mask
together.
We sew masks to cover,
isolate
so we can save each other.

My city is on fire and I am at home.
My mind is on fire for those not at home
working the graveyards
shifts day
after day.

We are bound together
by the threads of collective
humanity
the clenching of our jaws.

and hearts. This invisible
breath threads
our souls on a string
lines of patients
grocery shoppers, essential
workers in blessed
spacing all to save the
breath of another,
to ventilate each other's
thoughts with prayers.

We hold physical space
to show the immensity
of our love.
Let's remake the world
stitiching ourselves
from pieces to peace.


Let's Remake the World with Resilience
by Anna Martinez-Amos, after Gregory Orr

Let's remake the world with resilience.
Like the resilience of our ancestors
When their world was invaded by the others.
A precious few survived.
One here.
Another there.
A pocket of a lucky few together.

Let's remember it is the blood of these ancianos,
The ancient ones,
That flows from our wounds.


When the Lorde Speaks
By: Christine Wilson

Haven't we gotten ourselves
Into a fine mess,
I can hear Creator Mother
with her hand on her hip,
Thinking you could make and remake
the world with contracts and decrees

I sent the Prophet Audre
To unlearn you about the master's tools.
We can not update and proclaim and legislate
Our way out of this one.

I hear the Mother saying...
Start with kindness, start with listening...
Curate space for pauses, and for breaths.
Unmake this world of only words.


Let's Remake the World with Our Smile
By: Jasleen Singh

let’s remake the work with our smile
not the superficial smirk, nor
the gratuitous acknowledgement
but with the heart

let’s remove the boulders pressing down on our lips
allow the face to breathe again
take in the first ray of sunlit spring
the kind of warmth that envelops body and soul

then we may feel the pulse of the world
as if for the the first time
experiencing love
and the safety found in simple embrace


untitled
By: Troy Bronsink

lets remake the world with languages
we can’t all pronounce
like the tongue the moon has spoken
since before we started fucking it up with meaning-i-zation
lets remake the world with the song my body s
ang before it had a tongue
sure to resonate even after my mouth but only snores
the very song your body is humming along to
now, as we read together