Ralph Heibutzki & Lisa Quinlan attended the Mindfulness Workshop on May 19th: Mindful Poetry. We had a peaceful afternoon. We did three mindful exercises: seeing, listening & tasting and wrote poetry based on each exercise. They wanted to share their poems to raise awareness of the workshops. The next workshop will be June 15th, led by Tracie Crenshaw, subject to be announced.
Ralph Heibutzki from listening exercise:
Birds of plenty,
Tell me,
How many?
Up in the skies
Or down
On a branch
No telling
What’s happening
In the nest with this bunch
& this particular batch
Birds of plenty,
Tell me,
How many?
Looking down below
In no particular hurry vs.
Gleaming mobiles
That reign, silver & supreme,
Running ragged down the road,
Nervous & hurried, worried & scurried:
Birds of plenty,
Tell me,
How many?
I haven’t stopped
To count them
But I’m not really worried
It’s another sunny Saturday
and I’m not in any hurry
Time to take five
and watch the world go by:
Hey, thank you,
Birds of plenty.
Lisa Quinlan also from listening exercise:
I hear a few
peeps and peeps
here I can hear
some, when the birdsongs
disappeared so long
ago. There’s the
drone of my ears in the backyard
but finally…
peeps come in
the traffic droning ’em out
one bird is cliquey
another seems to be
arguing with another
another is higher in the trees
one keeps repeating itself
one song is larger
I’m probably missing a few notes
but the birds are still
singing on this
late May day.
