Slice of Life Tuesday & Haiku-A-Day December Challenge #4 Mash Up: Quiet Walks

Looking to connect with a positive, supportive online community?  Consider sharing a slice of your life with Two Writing Teachers. All writers are welcome! 

I am joining Elisabeth from The Dirigible Plum in writing a Haiku-A-Day during the month of December. Please let me know if you are posting a Haiku-A-Day too! I would love to read your work.

Haiku-A-Day December Challenge #4: Quiet Walks  

Podcasts and audio books are among some of my favorite forms of media. At one time I wouldn't leave my house for a walk or run without downloading an episode of Heavyweight or On Being. If I was in the middle of listening to an audio book, I made certain that each section was downloaded and ready for me to listen to. Then we got our second dog, Hondo - a temperamental border collie pup. It became challenging for me to focus on walking Hondo if I was paying attention to anything else. He didn't heal very well. He pulled on the leash, often knocking out my earbuds. And so, I was forced to leave my earbuds at home  - my iPhone safely stashed in my pocket. I didn't give up listening to podcasts or audio books, but I stopped listening to them when I walked our dogs. 

After a few weeks without technology, I got used to quiet walks. I don't regret this change like I thought I would. 

Now I notice more of what is happening around me - bird calls, sunrises, ice cracking on sidewalks, and even the rhythm of my steps. For some reason, I was thinking about this on today's early morning walk with Hondo. 

Here's my Haiku for today in the form of a double Haiku: 

Former walks filled with

podcast banter. Audible.

Mind distracted snips.

Now strolls sans earbuds.

Paws pattering on pavement.

Observing what calms. 

Slice of Life 2018 Day 20: Living in a Poem

"Your Life is a Poem" by Naomi Shihab Nye

About three years ago, I started regularly listening to podcasts on my iPhone. Podcasts are typically what keeps me company as I fold clothes, cook, or do the dishes. And if I can manage it, I listen to podcasts when I walk one of my dogs. One of my favorite podcast to listen to is On Being, hosted by journalist and author Krista Tippett.

The On Being Podcast hosts a variety of guests, including poets, authors, activists, and spiritual leaders. No matter the topic, I find that I always benefit from listening to the conversation between Krista Tippett and her guest. I record lines I want to remember in my writer’s notebook and am thrilled to discover new books to read or ideas to consider. Last week Thursday’s guest was poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Although this episode originally aired in 2016, I loved listening to it again and thinking about Naomi Shihab Nye’s work in a deeper way.

In the beginning of the podcast Naomi Shihab Nye shared her belief that she feels we are all living in a poem. She explained that when she visits classrooms she often writes this phrase on the board, “you are living in a poem.” In addition, she shared how she finds poetry to be organic and that we all think in poems. As part of a conversation in sharing with children the ways in which we live in a poem, Naomi Shihab Nye says, “...when you think, when you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re saving an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another, that’s a poem. What’s what a poem does.”

What an exquisite thought.

And these two lines of Naomi Shihab Nye especially resonated with me as I was listening to this episode:

• “If you know words, if you compose, you might want to share them because they’ll have a bigger life if you do that.” 
• “The story that you would be telling to yourself about the street, even as you walk down it, or as you drive down it, as you look out the window, the story you would be telling-it always seemed very much to me, as a child that I was living in a poem that my life was the poem.”

Since I listened to this podcast again last Thursday, this line has spooled in my mind, “you are living in a poem.” I cannot express in words how much I love this concept - living in a poem. It makes me want to savor my thoughts more and remind myself that my thoughts can be crafted into poems.

In thinking about living in a poem, and as I walked my dogs early Monday morning, these were a few lines mulling in my mind:

I anticipate yesterday’s warm breezy air as we

emerge early this morning:

me and my canine companions.

Yet cold chills my neck, numbs my face.

Immediately I return inside for my insulated coat,

winter hat, and

mittens.

Bare branches project against street lights,

trails of road salt snake on sidewalks,

and steep snow piles remain on edges of yards-

reminders that winter still remains.

How are you living in a poem today?