Refuge

Ask for one wild word,

A portable convent.

In the desert what seems empty is actually full.

Can I let what isn’t essential or nourishing wither?

A portable convent —

What if I were as quiet and spacious as the desert?

Let what isn’t essential or nourishing wither,

Honor the gifts.

What if I were as quiet and spacious as the desert?

In the desert what seems empty is actually full.

Honor the gifts.

Ask for one wild word.

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This poem was inspired by an invitation to create a pantoum in the book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year by Christine Valters Paintner. She explains that the “French pantoum is a poetic form with a circular structure that comes from the ordered repetition of lines.” Following her suggestion, I re-read my journal for the month of December and copied down lines that shimmered for me, then put them together according to her template, so this is in a way a found poem — like a mandala made of driftwood collected on the beach.