Mind Body Mama: Is that a poem in your pocket?

It’s one of those days. One of those days when everything makes me crabby or bone weary, a day to eat chocolate chips straight out of the package and spend the afternoon kvetching with BirthPie about things that trouble us which will never be solved while our children run themselves into hysterical melt downs in the backyard. A day to fantasize about drinking a pint of Farmer Brown at the People’s Pint because I don’t actually have a chance in hell of getting to the People’s Pint today or any day soon. It is the kind of day on which everything I write is dark and sniping and bordering on self-loathing, or as Spec-K gently chides, a little lacking in metta.

It’s the kind of day when the you shut up box on my desk gets a lot of use. The you shut up box is there to remind me to disregard what the cognitive behaviorists call wrong thoughts. Fifteen years ago I would never have bought the argument that one can school one’s mind to turn away from compelling negative messages. I don’t know what yours sound like, but mine run along the lines of: “I suck,” and “I’m a terrible writer/trainer/mother/human being,” and “What makes me think I can ever [fill in ambitious life goal here]?”

Back then if I had encountered the notion of wrong thoughts I would have used the concept itself to fuel the assault. As in, “I must really suck, only a sucky person would have such a wrong thought about how they suck.”

As they say, I’ve come a long way, baby. These days when the wrong thoughts rise up singing, I gently nudge them towards the you shut up box. On days like today, when they’re in really fine voice, I sigh gently and give myself the night off from anything more challenging than watching television.

So I’m abandoning a number of really terrific column ideas for another day, a day of greater patience and compassion and introspection, and instead bringing you a few links that lift me up when I’m heading for the slough of despond.

When I was suffering from burnout last fall Birth Pie came over to stage a remarkable intervention. She deftly lifted a heavy burden of domestic and professional responsibilities from my shoulders, then quizzed me on things I could do each day in the realm of self care. When I suggested “read a poem,” she raised one eyebrow quizzically but dutifully wrote it on the list.

A really good blogger would have told you all that today was Poem in Your Pocket Day early enough that you could have gotten in on the festivities (you shut up!), but I’m telling you now.

Here are some excerpts of poems I first encountered on the NPR program Writer’s Almanac, a terrific source of daily poetry. Click on the titles to link to the poems in their entireties:

Bike Ride with Older Boys
By Laura Kasischke

…My afternoons
were made of time and vinyl.My mother worked,
but I had a bike. They wanted

to go for a ride. Just me and them. I said
okay fine, I'd
meet them at the Stop-n-Go
at four o'clock.
And then I didn't show….

This Shining Moment in the Now
by David Budbill

"when I am every day all day all body and no mind, when I amphysically, wholly and completely, in this world with the birds,the deer, the sky, the wind, the trees... "

Another place I visit regularly for poetry is The Poetry Foundation. I especially enjoy using their Poetry Tool to discover new poets and new works by familiar poets, and I subscribe to the Poem of the Day podcast.

Another source of daily poetry has been the blog 100dayspoems/. The creators describe it thus:

“The day before the inauguration we sent out a call to poets we admire to write poems that respond, however loosely, to the presidency, the nation, the government or the current political climate. More than one hundred American poets responded immediately. The first 100 poets were each assigned one of President Obama’s first hundred days in office, and each will write a poem reflecting on the state of the nation and the world on that day. A new poem is posted every day.”

If you missed it for the last 100 days, nothing in there says you can’t read them over the next 100 days. I haven’t read them all myself but the ones I have were exquisite.

An unintended theme of this post seems to be being behind the 8-ball in some respect. (You shut up!) In that vein, you missed your chance to enter Kate Hopper’s toddler haiku contest, but you can still read the entries on her blog, Mothers Who Write.

And as the great E.B. White said, “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.” Spec-K is both. Discovering her poetry blog is like finding a fabulous book on your bookshelf that you didn’t know was there.

I hope poetry soothes your soul when you’re having one of those days. Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day.