And a Found Poem, too

Hello dear readers!

Let’s start out with something that matters most. 

How are YOU?  

I’m listening.  

I care about your answer.   Feel free to email me if you would like affirmation that I am.

Listening.

I continue to play with our Blueprints for a Hope-Filled Life.   Yes, our.   For Blueprints wouldn’t be what they are if it wasn’t for your interest, curiosity, time, and willingness to explore and experiment with me playing with what wants to find its way to paper with the intention of offering meaningfulness, inspiration, and at least a smile or two.   And perhaps encouragement for your own writing exploration and play. 

This week, once again, I offer words reframed. 

Another fiction character.  This time you will meet Joshua.

And this week I also offer a found poem.   I have a dear and treasured friend in my life that I am blessed to share in a weekly ritual of joyful writing together who writes exquisite, beautiful, inspiring, moving poems developed by putting together words read (or heard) from other poems, writings, speakings, etc.   I am an eager student learning from her! 

Before it feels a little daunting or overwhelming to have this much content, let me offer that you could read a little bit throughout the next couple of weeks until the next Blueprints.   I’ve held an aspiration to offer daily inspiration to readers, yet I don’t want to flood your inbox.  Think of this email as my heart’s way of wishing you a downstream flow great day, every day.  You get to decide which days to receive that wish based on reading this issue. 

May your day flow downstream with ease!

L  Letting

I   Internal

S  Speaking

T Transcend

E  External

N Noise

P  Possibilities

L  Limitless

A  As

Y  Youthful

F  Flow

U Unfolds

L  Laughter

N Nimble-ity

E  Eagerness

S  Silliness

S  Squee

Joshua  

Joshua knows his Thursdays are numbered. That he doesn’t have many more 4:00 p.m. dinner dates with his Grandpa Edward.  Edward’s physician told Joshua it could be anywhere from three months to eight months before the cancer would completely fill up his grandpa’s lungs.

Joshua doesn’t like to think of his grandpa struggling to breathe. Joshua also knows there will be no life-prolonging measures used to make his grandpa more comfortable. Watching his mom die of leukemia in hospice care taught Joshua and Edward the importance of this.

The price of loving someone with all your heart means you may have to let go when you don’t want to.

Joshua wasn’t ready to say goodbye to his grandpa, the male role model and father figure in his life.  Joshua’s mom didn’t really tell him much about his biological father. Only that they had met while in college, that Joshua had his smile, and that they had wanted different things in life, so his dad and mom each went their separate ways.

Joshua can’t help feeling that he would get along with his dad who wanted different things in life.

Joshua still hasn’t told Edward about Kaylen.  His wife. His beautiful, intelligent, successful, compassionate, physician wife with her deep brown eyes that remind him of perfect skipping stones found in the creek bottom his grandpa took him to when Joshua was six or seven years of age. His grandpa taught him how to hold the stone so that it would make the perfect skip.

Joshua closes his eyes often remembering.   He hears his grandpa say Ok, son, take this flat rock, here, like this.  Joshua feels the belief in his abilities and the acceptance in the way his grandpa coached the placement of his thumb on top of the rock, his middle finger underneath, his index finger along the edge.  Joshua still listens for his grandpa’s voice saying Good!  The sound of pride and love.   Hey, look at that skip! One. Two. Three. Great job son!   I’m proud of you!

Joshua had felt special that day. He also knew he never wanted to lose his grandpa’s admiration. Nor his love.

Which is why he still hasn’t told Edward about Kaylen.  He tells Kaylen he wants to protect her from rejection. Which is not untrue. He never wants her to hurt.

And she has certainly had more than her fair share. Racism is like that. It lavishes judgment and exclusion against those already in a minority. The judgment and exclusion heaps hurt on those who have already been hurt by centuries of discrimination and omission.

He is certain his grandpa would not accept Kaylen because of her skin color. Her glowing, silken, exquisite, Black skin. He has been in a vehicle with his grandpa one too many times hearing his grandpa mutter derogatory words about people who do not match his grandfather’s legacy WASP mindset.  Society’s definition is white, Anglo-Saxon protestant mentality; Joshua likes to think of it, What A Short-sighted Perspective.

Joshua has always pondered how his grandpa could travel the world, the front lines of so many meaningful endings like the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90’s, the Berlin Wall in the 80’s, the end of the Vietnam War in the 70’s, yet not embrace diversity.  

Joshua thinks back to that day his grandpa took him to the creek where Joshua learned to skip stones. The creek where his grandpa had spent much of his spare time as a child when he was Joshua’s age. Joshua remembers them sitting on the creek bank in silence, his grandpa staring into the water as if reminiscing about something. Or someone.

When Joshua asked if his grandpa’s dad had brought him to this creek and taught him to skip stones like Edward was doing with him, the reply was a simple “no, I came to the creek alone.”

His grandpa went on to say, “I once brought a friend to the creek. His name was Dakota, and he was Native American. I didn’t bring him here again.  After my dad forbade me to spend time with him. ‘We don’t mix with those not of our own kind,’ my dad told me after he hung his belt back up.

“Dakota was a nice kid. I liked hanging out with him.” And then with a slight laugh, his grandpa said, “but not as much as I liked that belt staying hung up on the hook.”

His Grandma Patricia met Kaylen a few weeks before she had her stroke. His grandma loved Kaylen instantly. Kaylen felt the same about his grandma.

They had met at a coffee shop near the clinic where Kaylen works. When Kaylen excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, Joshua asked his grandma when he should tell Edward. He can still feel her hand pat his as she looked at him tenderly, sympathetically. “Your grandpa is a good man, Joshua. Don’t forget that.  When the time is right to tell him, you will know.”

On this particular Thursday, when Joshua arrived, his grandpa was holding a folded letter. It looked well worn, maybe not even legible anymore. It was in Vietnamese.

“Someone I met at a coffee shop” was his grandpa’s reply when Joshua asked Edward who gave him the letter.

Joshua was frightened and curious at the same time when his grandpa began crying after Joshua translated the letter. He could only remember his grandpa crying twice. Once at Joshua’s mom’s bedside. The other was when Grandma passed away.

Who was this Mỹ, pronouced MEE? What was so special about her that grandpa carried her letter around with him for fifty-two years? Josh had so many questions.

And maybe one thing to tell Edward.  Soon.

Tip Toe, One Step at a Time

My toes are dictionaries

Do you need any words?

On my second little piggy

flowering of patience and steady perseverance

is

“vitality”

I’ll invite

Please someone

Live your way into this moment

and then teach your way out of this moment

our aliveness

our self-expression

our verve

a heart-centered revolution

live by love through our final breath

Inside my legs

real life walking

always, always arriving

I grow old

I am frayed

Yesterday faded

Yet

I am

pleased with my memories

Dazzled

by

the blues of every night

human connection

vulnerabilities;

a big part of what bonds us

unites us as human beings

Dazzled

by

tables filled with food and laughter

northern lights

Grown-ups

who

keep their feet on the ground

when they swing

May I always keep my feet raised

by the child within

me

Dazzled

by

Wait

Just think

—no one has ever seen

a bee

live in your shoe

What if you found your shoe

full of honey?

Maybe I will leave a shoe on the ground

when I swing

Tomorrow’s in BOLDFACE

cuddle

near

hear my whispers

to hold

to want

to

keep some child warm

Dazzled by

showing up every day

being human

So much love…it’s everywhere

the picture of the world is the experience of it

our sacred relations …

brother dolphin and sister humpback whale

sister gull

sister meadow and brother forest

our kinship with brother bald eagle

and sister box turtle,

sister song sparrow and

brother swallowtail butterfly

brother

sister

to people you don’t even know

deep water, too

From now on

I call you sister

Rose-breasted grosbeak

in the middle—

of our picture window

are you sister?

Or brother?

I think your fluttering wings

at the French door

whispered

be way thoughtful about how

I

show up

No matter how,

throw the word out

“can’t”

Change faces

Put

hands in the air

Fly

No apology

Be

a change agent

for

a truly just and life-centered world

even if we never see it come into existence

Even if

in the house

of Mother Earth

where we live now

is

loneliness

there’s a stopper

Return to the places where the stories begin

to challenge them

you are

a change agent

for someone in your life

Intentionality is everything   

Blue heron of tranquility

A friend shared that you also offer

“follow me”

As I navigate

the river

of life

I think I will call you

brother

from now on

I never want to minus

relationality

and how to make it graceful

Grace activates other values

like

fierce love

hope for a good outcome

hope of being good people

seeping through

What this decade will be

known for

One step into the unknown at a time

Isn’t that happiness?

Found Poem extracted from:

• Naomi Shihab Nye, “One Boy Told Me” from Fuel. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi  Shihab Nye. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. http://www.boaeditions.org

Nikki Giovanni and her poems “Quilts” and “Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day”

Speakers of Wisdom 2.0 2024 event (Soren Gordhamer): Dr. Elizabeth Markle, Alanis Morisset, Deepok Chopra,  Tarana Burke, Jon Kabat-Zinn

Writers for Center for Action and Contemplation from week of May 13 – May 18: Richard Rohr, authors LaUra Schmidt and Aimee Lewis Reau, Brian McLaren, author Kaitlin Curtice