Found Poem: Psalm 116

Psalm 116

I love the Lord, 

He heard my voice;

Gracious, merciful Lord,

I offer thanksgiving.

Praise ye the Lord!

by Donna JT Smith

Sunday's Found Poem

Today's found poem is from Psalm 100: 1-5 in the KJV Bible.  It developed nicely into a Haiku today.

 Psalm 100: 1-5

Make a joyful noise,


Serve with gladness, Come singing:

His truth endureth.

I hope you have a wonderful day!  Do something good or fun, or both, that you have fond memories of for a long time - perhaps for even longer than the winter!

Friday

I told you I'd tell you about the Metaphor workshop today, but unfortunately I was only able to attend for about an hour.  I kept hearing an insistent buzz from my cell phone across the room, and finally went to see what was up.  We had a family emergency that I couldn't deal with there.  It would require extended time out of the class, so I had to excuse myself.  Rachel said she would send me the comments on my poem, as well as the comments on the other participants' poems.  So I am awaiting those in snail mail.

Meanwhile this week I helped a friend compile a book in Blurb, and because I was going to help her, I refreshed my skills in Blurbify by writing and assembling the book I was going to make for my 3 year old grand daughter for Christmas.  Here's a page from it:

Chicks

Just a little while ago

Some eggs were slowly hatching

Now you see chicks everywhere

Pecking, eating, scratching!

I am now editing out the dedication page and making it available for sale on Blurb by the end of the day today.  Of course the pictures and text are clearer in real life, since I've pixeled it down some for a web page.  Each page has an image, a short poem, and a question for young reader "audience".  I'm excited to give it to her, and will have to think about ways to separate it from the hubbub of some glittery toy so she notices it!  I should have added a princess page - that was a mistake

Michelle Barnes is celebrating the availability of her second amazing anthology of poems from her Today's Little Ditty blog challenges.  You can pick up a copy here:

The Best of Today's Little Ditty 2016 is available 

 in paperback for $9.95 or as a Kindle ebook for $5.95.

Click HERE to purchase at Amazon.com

It is beautifully illustrated by Teresa Robeson. Read her interview with Teresa here.

Today of course, is Saturday, but because I MEANT this to be posted on Friday, I'm linking it to Poetry Friday where it is being hosted by Jane Whittingham at Raincity Librarian. Go there to connect with lots of great links to poetry and poets!

My Five Word Thankful thought for today:

Brought to You By the Letters

Alphabet's versatility =

messages for posterity

 

Acts 1: 4-11

Acts 1: 4-11

wait for the promise

it is not for you
to know the times
ye shall receive power

and be witnesses
unto the uttermost part of the earth.
when
he was taken up
out of their sight
they looked stedfastly toward heaven
two men in white apparel said
“why stand ye gazing 

up into heaven?
Jesus shall come
as ye have seen him go”

This was an answer to prayer this morning.  I love when that happens.

THIS morning (Monday), I looked at it again, and decided to tweak some more, just for fun and see if I could condense further.  And I like it better now.

Acts 1: 4-11
wait for the promise -
it is not
for us to know
the times -
receive power,
be witnesses
unto the earth;
Jesus shall come
as seen go 

And He is still a help to me.

Metaphor for Today

Today I have a metaphor workshop. As preparation prior to the workshop, this past week we were sent some readings to do about the topic, and copies of all 12 participants' poems.  We are to find positives in each poem, making note of rhythm, line breaks, word usage, etc.

As I read, I am getting a better handle on what they are talking about in writing poems of metaphor.  As I read the other poems, I am getting scared.  Mine is nothing like the others.  The others are more "grown up", more sophisticated; and some I just don't understand.  I feel like the Grandma Moses in a group of Rembrandts!

I'm already thinking of edits to my poem, not Rembrandt quality, but at least more to the point of the workshop!  I have written a couple or three short poems using metaphors that I think may be closer to what I should be trying for.

This growing is painful, or exciting...I'm not sure.  Ha!  I think I had those emotions in childbirth, too!  Now there's the beginning of a metaphor for you.

The Birth of a Poem

She thought she knew
Before it grew;
Excitement brewing,
Thoughts all stewing,
Then came the clue
There'd be pain, too!
Sometimes a flow,
Then times more slow;
But this she knew,
There was joy, too.

Donna JT Smith

I'll let you know how Grandma Moses felt or did next Friday.
Until then, keep perusing the list of poems at Jama's Alphabet Soup for Poetry Friday this week!  Jama's serving some delicious doughnuts!



 

Found Poem 2 Peter 3: 1-28

Sunday's Found Poem from the KJV Bible:

2 Peter 3: 1-28

I stir up 

remembrance:
The Lord will come
as a thief in the night;
heavens shall pass,
earth burned.
What ought ye to be?

Diligent, without spot,

blameless. 

Grow in grace,
and the knowledge 

of Christ - 

to him be glory

for ever. 

By Donna JT Smith, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017

Power

It is Poetry Friday.
It is Poetry Friday whether you have electricity or not.
(Update:  WE HAVE POWER!)  Ours went out at 2:30 am on Monday...see yesterday's post.
The storm we had was called a bomb cyclone.  They are caused by a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure.  I guess it was instigated by Tropical Storm Philippe that merged with a cold front (I'd call it  collision, not a merging...but hey, I'm not a weather expert) right over Maine.
But it is still Poetry Friday.  And on Wednesday, I had time to be at Starbucks with lots of other cravers of WiFi and coffee. I had time at LL Bean's coffee shop on the first day of no power.  They had WiFi and iced coffee and iced tea.  No lights.  Just the essentials.

Here's my storm poem.  It's been fun hanging out watching people starving for the Internet and coffee.

Power

We are tethered
to the wall,
Power surges
feeding all;
Lifeblood's concourse,
should it fall,
As a leach minds
nature's call,
So we'll wander
and we'll crawl
Seeking outlets
in the mall
Ere our iPad
starts to stall
With no power
All's a pall.

by Donna JT Smith


Visit more Poetry Friday offerings with the electric Linda Baie at Teacher Dance!

Spiritual Journey First Thursday

Gratitude

Fourth day with no power.  Still have to be careful of trees resting on wires, closed roads, etc.
I am so sorry for making this long, but I started writing it when I found out the topic, and it so nicely coincided with the storm, and all the things that happened that, though on the surface seemed difficulties, were actually blessings and true reasons for deep gratitude.

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Colossians 3:15 - And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.

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This should be an easy one.  On the first Thursday of each month Irene Latham has arranged for us to post and be hosted about a topic selected by the host of the day.
Today's hostess is Karen and our topic is Gratitude, the roundup is Here on Irene's site.

This week has been full of reasons to be grateful, to have a heart filled with gratitude.  We started off the week, on Sunday, at church, where people were talking about preparing for the storm.  "What storm?"  I had no idea there was a storm coming.  That is mostly because we don't get much in the way of news or weather now.  We mostly watch Netflix.  There's not fast Internet where we live and we don't get cable.  We had a dish, but there are so many trees and leaves, it wasn't reliable.  So basically we don't get TV, and news is only if we remember to look online.

We checked the Weather Channel on our phones.  And yes, there was a storm coming with hurricane force winds and plenty of rain.  My, my, yes.  Plenty of rain.  Just look at that band of green, yellow, orange and red coming at us enmasse.
I was so grateful people had warned us of the coming storm.  I was grateful for being able to easily check the Weather Channel.

When we got home, we took all items off our porch and tucked the Weber grill in the garage, where it was time for it to go anyway.  Then we waited.  Our generator was on the porch ready, and I asked my husband if it still worked.  He assured me it did and it had gas in it.  We'd used it last winter.  No, we hadn't.  But okay.  It works.

That night, early morning...2:30 am....I awoke to the wind howling and the shuddering of the house as it tried to die.  Off, on, off, on, off...beep (I think the smoke alarms were protesting).  Then on, off, on, off...beep...repeat, repeat, dead.

And it has remained dead.  Four days and counting.

When it was real morning, my husband got up and started the generator...not.  It was dead.  It had gasoline, it started, but it wouldn't continue running.  Hmmm.  Not so grateful about that... but not to worry.  Let's just focus on what we CAN do.

We waited for a few hours before venturing out to see if there was power anywhere else. The dog ran out in the rain, then we wiped her feet and back and fed her.  She was so wiggly grateful!  It would be nice to have coffee and breakfast.  I'd be wiggly grateful, too!

We left the house unprepared for the massive outages, powerlines down and trees crossing the roads.  Our one McDonald's in the area was on generator power, and was open!  Its usually colorful screens were displaying the LG emblem on a black background... and it was packed.  Surrounding towns had discovered our little haven of hashbrowns.

Though it was shoulder to shoulder packed with people waiting for food, everyone was in good spirits.  We thought our son was coming to join us, so we ordered two extra sandwiches.  But he was already trying to weave his way through wires and trees to make it to work, so didn't show.  We gave our sandwiches away, to someone waiting.  How fun it that?  I was thankful to be able to do that.  The recipient was thankful to have them.

Then we began our search for a generator.   We gradually headed inland and north a ways where the storm didn't seem as devastating. Still there were none to be had; others had already been there before us.

Oh the second morning, I happened to text my brother to see how he'd fared and let him know that we had no power and our generator had chosen this time to stop working.  We live on an island with basically one main road that ends literally on a dock into the ocean (and yes, people have driven off the end accidentally in the fog), so when they are looking to restore power, we are not top on the list, since heading our way is a dead end - not on the way to another town until you hit London.

Anyway, he had a generator he was getting rid of!  I should have texted him the day before!  But if I had, I wouldn't have seen my sister at a McDonald's and had a nice breakfast chat with her.  We are only about 45 minutes away from each other, but don't see each other as much as we should.  On our way to get the generator (about an hour south of us), my sister came in one side door, as we came in the opposite side, and we met at the counter.   We both grinned in surprise!  This was neither of our local McD's, and neither of us frequented this one.  So it was a chance meeting, and I was grateful for the opportunity to touch base with her.  She had no power either, and was out in search of food, as we were.

Got our generator...

Then we discovered that the connector we had on the house was an OLD four prong one, and this generator was the newer style four pong.  We could, however, still use an extension cord and directly connect our refrigerator to the generator through our kitchen window.  Sweet!  Our food was all spoiled, BUT we could accommodate our son's freezer full of meat after emptying ours!  I was grateful we could save what he had.  It was a LOT of frozen meat.

The search for an adapter continued.

On Wednesday morning I had an idea - maybe our contractor would have some idea of an out of the way place that would sell generator supplies.  He came up with a local and lesser known place than Lowe's or HD to check. We scurried off to see if they had the part!  But when we got there we were told that the last one had just been sold.  We sat in the parking lot looking on our phones for another option.  Suddenly we had a knock on the window and were asked to come back in the supply store, they'd just found one.  Someone who worked there had evidently set one aside for himself to purchase.  I am so grateful to him.  I hope he has a working generator or power - he probably does, but wanted to make sure he was ready for the next storm. What a blessing!

So much to be thankful for - we got a generator just in time to save all the frozen meat my son had in his freezer, in spite of all odds.  We got a part we needed when it looked pretty bleak.  We were able to keep warm, find gas, find food, talk to strangers as friends.

Being without power does not mean we are powerless.  In some ways it gives us more power than we knew we had.  We call on reserves we had forgotten existed.  We call on friends.  We depend on others.  They call on us.  

Again, I'm sorry this is so long.
Oh, I forgot.  I'm thankful that we bought some remote controlled LED puck lights to try under the cabinet lighting a few days before the storm.  Boy, did they come in handy, and you can carry them to any room for light!  Simple blessings, little things that still give me a grateful heart.

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Philippians 4:11 - Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

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I am content.
Thank you, Lord.
Amen