Celebrating National Poem in Your Pocket Day

Words by Catherine Fisher from The Unexplored Ocean (Seren)
They are stones
shaped to the hand. 
Fling them accurately.

They are horses.
Bridle them;
they'll run away with you.

They are windows,
opening on vistas
that are unreachable.

They are apples.
Bite on hardness
to the sweet core.

They are coracles;
flimsy,
soon overloaded.

They are candles.
Carry them carefully.
They have burned cities.

 

As part of National poetry month, today is National Poem in your Pocket Day.  Catherine Fisher's poem is the one I'll be carrying with me and sharing today.  If you'd like to get in on the celebration, take a few minutes today to share a poem with someone . . . email one to a friend, post one in the comments section of a blog (hint hint), read one to a family member, or carry a copy of a poem in your pocket and give it to an unsuspecting stranger. 

An honest love poem

Welsh Love Letter by Michael Burn from Open Day and Night (Chatto)
Were all the peaks of Gwynedd
In one huge mountain piled,
Cnicht on Moelwyn,
Moel-y-gest, Moel Hebog,
And Eryri on top,
And all between us,
I'd climb them climb them
All!
To reach you.
Oh, how I love you!

Were all the streams of Gwynedd
In one great river joined,
Dwyfor, Dwyryd,
Glaslyn, Ogwen,
And Mawddach in flood,
And all between us,
I'd swim them swim them
All!
To reach you.
O, how I love you!

Were all the fortress of Gwynedd
In one great fortress linked,
Caer and castle,
Criccieth, Harlech,
Conwy, Caernarfon,
And all in flames,
I'd jump them jump them
All!
To reach you.
O, how I love you!

See you Saturday.
If it's not raining.


I find a lot of glorious love poems when I'm looking for material for this blog.  Some I file away, hopefully, for future personal use.  Most I read and let go.  This one, however, I just had to share.  Not because it made me laugh.  And not because I've eaten far-too-many half price gummy hearts this afternoon and have had slightly nauseating thoughts of love and romance as a result (actually I'm just slightly nauseated in general).  The more I read this poem, the more I realized that it speaks to our nature as human beings in a way that goes beyond romantic love.  It's the time worn adage, "Actions speak louder than words."  We all know better, but sometimes it's easy to get swept up in words, the words we hear from others as well as the words we say to others . . . and to ourselves.

There have been times when I've proclaimed such platitudes, expressed grand intentions.  Great passion is betrothed to the promise of dramatic action until it actually comes time to do something. Then the ifs and but' object and the wedding is off.  Sometimes it's sheer laziness, at other times self-centeredness that's at the root of my inaction.  On rare occasions I get caught up in emotion and make promises before I've really thought things through and in hindsight, realize that what I've said isn't for the higher good.

Conwy Castle, Gwynedd - Hard to set alfame, even harder to jump

Often though, it's fear that stops the action.  Placing conditions on the situation let's me off the hook emotionally.  Staying in my cozy dream world climbing imaginary Welsh mountains seems a heck of a lot safer than actually venturing out into the real world where I might get rained upon, even if I'm just stepping outside on the porch to get the mail.  

William James said, "Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action."  So this evening I'm pondering the "if's" I'm using as an excuse not to act on something that will bring happiness.  I think the first step is to plan on always carrying an umbrella.

Adjective or verb. . .what is my comfort zone?

There are lots of words in the English language-- 616,500 according to the second edition of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary published back in 1989, which means it likely leaves out many newly minted words such as blogging and Brangelina.   If you were to say one word every second, it would take you just over a week to go through the entire inventory of the English language.  However, linguist David Crystal estimates the vocabulary of the average native English speaker consists of some 60,000 - 75,00 words including both active (those we use) and passive (those we understand) words, so a day would suffice for most people to exhaust their storehouse of vocabulary.

The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists provides a ranking of the most commonly used words in English.  Numbers 1-25 make up about 1/3 of all the printed material and the first 100 make up about half the written words in English. 

The First Hundred
the of and a to in is you that it he was for on are as with his they I	at be this have from or one had by word but not what all were we when your can said	there use an each which she do how their if will up other about out many then them these so	some her would make like him into time has look two more write go see number no way could people	my than first water been call who oil its now find long down day did get come made may part

Given those statistics, it's surprising that Sunday was the first time I noticed an odd synchronicity.  As I was spending a somewhat lazy morning lying in bed listening to NPR's Morning Edition and catching up on blog reading, at exactly the same moment I was reading the words "comfort zone" on the screen, the words were being said on the radio.  Granted, neither the word comfort nor zone appear in the top 1000 much less 100 commonly used words, which is probably one reason I noticed the occurrence-- because it isn't an everyday phrase.  But more than just the coincidence of reading and hearing the exact same phrase at the exact same moment, what made me really sit up and take notice was the juxtaposition of the contexts. 

The phrase I heard was in a story about the response of members and clergy in historically African-American churches to the upcoming vote in North Carolina surrounding gay marriage. A pastor used the parable of the Good Samaritan as a lesson in inclusion, saying, "Jesus is always calling us away from our comfort zones." 

The phrase I read was on a Danish fashion and lifestyle blog I follow. It described a look book full of romantic, embellished clothes that the author said inspired her but, as a Scandinavian women used to "edgy" and "minimalist" fashion, moved her out of her comfort zone. 

Radical acceptance, respect and compassion for "an other" on the one hand; wearing lacy skirts and pink fuzzy sweaters on the other:  Two  very different ways of moving beyond a comfort zone.  I don't want to imply that one of these examples is more noble than the other.  I've watched enough episodes of "What Not to Wear" to realize that for many women, fashion comfort zones are tied to deeper issues than just a personal preference for style-- body image, gender issues, power, sexuality.  And as for Jesus, well as one of my professors in seminary said, "What Jesus asks us to do is not usually difficult but it is frequently inconvenient."

Comfort by Edvard Munch

But this did make me think about my own comfort zones-- those I am willing to break out of or perhaps just stretch a bit, and those I want to stay hunkered down in for the long haul.  There have been situations in my life lately where I've had to move out of my comfort zone, not by choice but in order to be present with and for others.  And maybe that's the key to knowing when I should move beyond my comfort zone . . . when it involves the transition from comfortable to comfort, from adjective to verb.