Been Writing Again

Amid my job searching and grant writing internship work I have had a few moments of inspiration creatively. Here are a few poems I came up with since the first of the year.  Also, I submitted more poems to Poetry Quarterly in hopes of being published again.

Clay

By Kimberly L McClune

January 3, 2013

When I am wet, my heart is open

Pliable and easy,

Smooth and bendable.

Mold me with Your spirit

Shape me into Your will

Make me in Your image.

I am Yours

I exist for You

I was created by You.

But when I am dry, I am hard

Coldness seeps in

My heart is closed.

I resist You

Push You away, 

Turn my back on You.

I let fear overwhelm me.

My spirit shudders, fades,

I cower inside, afraid.

My soul is dry, hard clay

Stiff and unyielding

Crumbling,

Chipping,

Cracking.

Rain on me!

Make me supple again

Soft and flexible

Bend and shape me

Make me useful,

A jar to hold Your spirit. 

This piece was written in a moment of spiritual searching.  As you can see, I was asking God to make me His own and help me to not rely on my own powers and understanding, but His.  I found great peace in creating this.

Melody and Lyric

By Kimberly L. McClune

April 5, 2013

Wordless

Lilting tones

Spilling over eardrums,

Slipping into the soul,

Married with sweet harmonies

Create moods in notes

And rhythms.

Stealing upwards

Toward the sky

Happy sounds lift spirits,

To soar with angels,

Carried on melodic themes

And intonations.

Words

Letter formed

Gripping the heart

Touching the soul.

Carefully chosen rhymes

Stories of love

And heartbreak,

Reaching inside

Pulling at thoughts

Tugging at memories.

Told to open hearts,

Tales of sorrow

And joy.

This piece was written specifically for my former Music Professor at Lycoming College who is retiring this year after teacher there for 37 years.  He was very special and I wanted to create something to share with him on his retirement.  This was sent in a package along with some photos and the next poem to be placed in a memory book for him and his family.

On a Song

By Kimberly L. McClune

October 4, 2010

Taking flight,

Soaring in your heart over memories,

Hopes and dreams.

Reaching into yourself,

One moment flowing into another.

Time, captured by a tune,

Lost inside the melody

Held by the words,

Glint of a dream

Shadow of a tear.

While I recently sent this and the previous poem to my college for the memory book, I had written it a few years ago to recount my feelings and thoughts after listening to a particular;y touching song.  Music is an important part of my life, so is writing.  When the two are put together into a song, it is especially moving for me in most cases.  Both of these previous poems have been submitted to Poetry Quarterly as well.

I have written some other pieces since the first of the year, but I don't want to cram too much into this post.  Would that I could spend more time on poetry and stories.  I have several stories and many poems started and in various stages of completion.  Oh that the things that call me away from writing would do themselves so that I could just write and write and write.  Alas, this is but a dream.

I hope that you enjoy these pieces and will watch for another post soon with a few more recent works.

Inspiration

Well, I have nothing to lose by trying again to be published in another issue of Poetry Quarterly.  I submitted four poems, all older works, to them this morning.  This was inspired by having just written my first poem in at least two months.  Recently, my time has been spent in study for a new career, job hunting and raising my child so there has not been much time for writing, as I had hoped.

The inspiration for this new poem was not what most expect.  It was a very personal poem, kind of a healing work.  You see some poems are inspired by beauty and what you glean from the world around you, and some are from the depths of your soul and express deep emotion.  Take a sonnet from Shakespeare.  These works are doubtless the inspiration from the depths of a soul tortured in the fullness of love.  I say tortured because love can be a difficult emotion.

To continue on the topic of inspiration, when I write about a tree or sunset, there is less emotion and more appreciation for beauty in that work, that desire to put pen to paper and describe my view.  I love to paint pictures with words, to make a scene come alive from the written page.  What I have been learning in the last year or so is to bring emotion up from the page as well and this is harder because that emotion comes from deep within me.  I find that I do less editing on a poem that is filled with emotion.  The feelings must be real and they must be raw on the page.  They must not be altered to make them sound or appear a certain way, they must be the way they first come to me from deep within or they are not true.

Now, when you see the poem I wrote this morning you will find that it has a sort of rhythm.  This was not necessarily intentional.  This is the way that it came to me.  Honestly, it came to me as a song as I drove home from my daughters school before 8am.  I sang the first few lines to myself then came in the house and started to write.  The poem I will share here is exactly what came from me first thing this morning.

I cannot say that famous poets or more learned poets would take the same position about writing as I do.  I also do not profess to be particularly learned on poetry.  However, I can say that I am pleased with the results I achieve in my own writing.  Others, whose opinions I value, have given me honest, positive and constructive feedback on my work.  This gives me cause to believe that I have a talent for poetry beyond just my own pleasure.  Whether the world would agree or not is something that I am not concerned about.  If I took on the weight of pleasing everyone the joy of writing and the restorative peace I receive from the process would be lost and I would give it up completely.

So enough about the process and on to the work I produced in very little time this morning.  I will not reveal the reasoning behind this work as it is personal and not important to reading and culling your own enjoyment and thoughts from it.

World of Dreams

By Kimberly L. McClune

September 19, 2012

In my world of dreams

I would love you better,

Hope would come more easily

Faith would be more natural

Dreams would all come true.

In my world of dreams

You would always come to me

My arms would open wide

We would be so comfortable

Just to be.

In my world of dreams

I would know you love me

Just the way I am

No need for forgiveness

You would know I love you, too.

In my world of dreams

We’d have all we needed

No more need for fear

Worries all behind us

Together, just we two.