Mindful Poetry Gathering- April 3, 2024

A "song" for joy and ache in solitude.

Thank you to all who attended our first Mindful Poetry Gathering of National Poetry Month 2024! We listened and contemplated the poem "Song" by Adrienne Rich. Holistic wellness specialist, consciousness coach, and professional drummer Daniel Fresco opened our session with beautiful grounding meditation. And our curator, translator, vocalist, composer, poet, and educator Haleh Liza Gafori facilitated our exploration of the poem and writing time.

Writing Prompt: Think of a cherished moment of solitude like a single flower in a field, a bird in the sky, or the experience of reading a good book or taking a nice walk by yourself. Describe being in that moment with all of your senses and write about how being alone in that moment makes you feel.

Watch the Gathering on YouTube

Join our next Gatherings in April 2024 for National Poetry Month!

Connect with Daniel Fresco
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Connect with Haleh Liza Gafori
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Read poems created by the group below. And send us your poem to include!

Copyright © for all the poems below belong to their respective authors. 

Haleh Liza Gafori

Daniel Fresco

Alone With a World Wrapped in Grief
after "awake in a house wrapped in sleep" Adrienne Rich
By Holly Brians Ragusa

Solitude does not leave me alone, it asks me to listen to myself and when I hear myself
I hear the rush of others running over me,
through me, throughout time

There is no time
There is no time
to waste being lonely in the face of the moon
and a holy host of stars bleeding light through time to reach us

I sing the chorus of quiet so loudly
How can I not sing this symphony of solitude that draws me closer to
Aloneness
Alone in a world wrapped in grief
Silos we sit in squares on screens
each meaning our meanings as meaningfully as can be

We mean
We mean
We mean to mean well and I sit in my square and think of my leanings and givens and misgivings and the worlds we inhabit and I want you to know that I see mine in yours.

When alone I am never alone for I have hearing in my heart and feeling in the tips of my fingers on a brink of your pain and mine and I feel your phantom limb
I quake with the earth when nature and man bomb us with unnatural fractures
I sway in my silence in a gale force of iced air and in the hush of an albatross wing

I smell your fear
I don’t mean to
I don’t mean to
I don’t mean to eavesdrop on your pain, so close to my own,
but I know no other way to live alone.

A song for no parking
by Bryce Kessler

My downtown apartment has no parking, so I park my car a few blocks away always a solo hike to haul my groceries and bags from the day down the busy road, through a small side street and up two flights of stairs there's always something new to see or smell the fresh market meat or the hot steam of trash – always worst in the summer – there's of course the noise of the traffic horns telling someone they're not turning right on red fast enough, a family shouting out their door, or a dump truck backing into a site for new apartments and new people, but I also notice the small things. The new stickers and posters on telephone poles, a cat flicking its tail in the window, a small window box of flowers and a parking meter recently replaced or destroyed. All the things, all the city singing together in a slaw of being alive. A *ping* notification of change, movement, of song and life.

a song of liberation is a song of forgiveness
By Shivani Gupta

is a song of letting go: I am
a forager of forgiveness

planting flowers on deathbeds
stealing deserved nourishment

the dead wait for no one
why then, should i wait for unweighted endings

today i reveal a cave sized part of me

enter: here

the mouth is a cave
the heart is a cave
the belly is a cave

stop: there

belly cave rumbles with the echo
fresh mosaic splatters -

i am blood soaked
and empty

you have drained what was left,
and now i am free. 

Lonely as the Rose
by Cheri Atkinson

Choosing to take the blades
to the rose in the warming April morning
Eyes seek a shape and fingers
fondle lightly these stems
Remembering old flowering
I smile for the fresh leaf buds
unfurling
You have named me
your own Tender - tenderly I come
And you leave your sliver in my hand

Alone in the Miles
BY Clarice Warner

Feeling everything- the cold, the warmth, the heat. 

Hearing it all- the hum of the start of the new day. The birds sounding off.

Smelling fresh grass, the scent of fresh laundry and sometimes coffee. 

Seeing something different with each step. Noticing something that wasn’t there before. 

The morning walk- my guilty pleasure, where I can think. Where nature makes me take notice and revel in her beauty. 

It’s just us moving with each step, with each breath. He gives me peace in these isolated moments to face the new day and to be grateful for it all. 

Untitled
by Kateri Sparrow

The rain washes away my trembling thoughts. 

The wind ceases its whispers.

The drumbeat of my heart is steady and calm.

I am one.

Awake in a Sleeping House
by Ellen Austin-Li

Every moment of solitude is pressed
into a pearl that grows richer, more layered
and lustrous within the oyster shell of my body.
In the beginning, aloneness may or may not
have been an irritant—it was merely the first
grain implanted on a journey, at turns lonely,
towards beauty. Time and its constant forces
wash through me. The retreat to self threads
a string of pearls looped and repeating.

Cleaning out dresser drawers
          old beaded necklaces
                    panties and pearls