This week’s poem inspired by the Association for the appreciation of January shares ideas for everyday inspiration – especially in January.

Especially January

Everyday has its inspiration –
Waking early and going out for a walk, a run or watering pot plants on the rooftop
Trying to catch dawn some days, hearing birds wake, seeing bats settling upside down for a day’s rest
Passing by favorite places – shady corner in a park, a flower garden, an intricate fig-tree, where crows meet to argue, where new leaves are breaking free
Waking your skin with cold water at the end of a hot shower, pulling your hair to get blood to your brain
Watchful for moments to capture, to photograph, offer as poems, as stories or just to store as memories
Taking exercise as a reward – swimming underwater, walking amongst old trees, dancing to deafening music, jogging in slightly scary places
Cooking for people who love food and eating it with them
Exercising and stretching everyday
Inviting art into your life – visiting galleries and buying paintings, reading poems and brilliant books, reading old favorites again and again, listening to music that moves you
Spending earnings on experience with people you love and not bothering too much about stuff
Meditating on nothing – or on good things – lists of those who people your life, interesting places, rivers you’ve swam in, trees you’ve rested under
Being brave enough to push on, not stopping when your heart starts to pound
Celebrating every day and every months while it’s there –
Especially January

Dhaka 2016

This week’s poem… so much happening but still to be processed, so I’ll make use of the memories and inspiration of those happy weeks in Kenya for another week.

Beached

Fine white line,
expanding, shrinking,
meandering between blue and green.

Contour where worlds collide,
battered bodies wash up,
fishermen launch and land,
children build with sand.

Sweat, tears, ocean water,
inorganically living,
organically eroding away.

Kenya 2015

This week’s poem, inspired by days spent at our old home on Diani Beach, Kenya.

Diani revisited

“It’s not all about nostalgia,” he says,
as we cross the disappearing beach to incoming tide,
recall him walking there,
his younger self.

Adults take up conversations
as if we stepped off the veranda
ten minutes ago,
youth take longer,
building new connections –
neural pathways altered in intervening years.

“It is not about the past” I agree,
we are making new memories, fresh adventures.
Tide is going out and we walk here,
our younger selves.

Diani 2015

My unplanned Christmas break is soon to end… caused by just too much going on (in the best possible way) and poor internet access while traveling, I hope to tap into all the interesting and inspiring events of the last few weeks with new poems in the coming days and weeks.

Rilla