Inspiration

You never know where inspiration might strike you. Each month my poetry group is given an optional, usually inspiring, “poemwork” assignment. For August the assignment was to write a mandala poem. Naturally, the first thing I did was some research on mandalas. Holy smokes was there ever a lot of it!

The accumulation of this research was followed by a day when the humidity let up enough for it to be comfortable sitting out on the deck. And as I was sitting there trying to absorb all this information, I watched the birds at the feeder and a whole other poem came to me:


Bird Watching

The grackles emptied my feeder again
but the others still come.
First is a pair of sparrows –
so small, so sweet, so loud!
A female cardinal sits on the fence, chirping
working up the courage to check out what’s left.
She flies away again, unimpressed.
A young mourning dove lights on the fence
trying to look inconspicuous.
He’s joined by a jay,
who boldly announces his presence
but stays in the shelter of the brush.
Two larger mourning doves land on the patio
and get to work amongst the detritus left behind.
Incensed, the young one swoops down
to chase the larger of the two off.
Unconcerned, the second one keeps pecking away.
It’s slim pickings
the grackles are nothing if not thorough.
The remaining mourning dove finally gives up
and flies away.
I wish I could fly with them.


A unique idea came to me for my mandala poem – I’d use all this information I gathered and do a black out poem. A black out poem is when a poet takes a black marker to a page of text (usually non-fiction) and starts covering over everything but the few key words/phrases that make their poem. The scan of my poem is below (you can click on it to make it bigger), and because I did such a poor job of blacking out the surrounding text, I’ve included the straight text version below that.

adherence to the cycle of rebirth and death
encouraged true knowledge.
understanding came up through the present
to elevate the mind.
a spiritual shift encouraged the Hindu vision.
people could not understand objections to this practice.
those who rejected the mandala insisted on establishing
the materialistic truth of one’s own pleasure.
enlightened souls freed themselves;
people suffered in a world of constant change.
shedding one’s ignorance, the soul suffers.
Mandalas journey from illusion to enlightenment.
toward the end
I gradually began to emerge from the darkness.