Tag Archives: Art

Poetry, Writing

Hafiz – Poem 5

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All images created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompts using AI on Gencraft.com website.

I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 5:

     Be in harmony

With the spring clouds

Some thoughts:

This little poem is packed with meaning, like a cloud full to bursting with spring rain. The concept of harmony is not demanding or structured, not perfect unison or absolute. It is complementary, attuned to the movement and ever-changing nature of formation. A cloud is by nature evolving endlessly. The idea of collecting the elements into oneself until so full you must release that life-giving abundance so it can pour out upon others is magical, mystical, and inspirational. And yet, it is something clouds do without conflict, easily, without a second thought. To move with the filling and sharing of abundance as naturally as a spring cloud would be a miraculous transformation.

My Poem 5:

Gathering, shifting unpredictably
Carrying shade, rain, promise
Teachers of impermanence
Arriving gently
Leaving unapologetically
No clinging to shape
No rushing of purpose
No fear of change
Moving inside time
Dissolving as necessary

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.

Poetry, Writing

Hafiz – Poem 4

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All images created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompts using AI on Gencraft.com website.

I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 4:

Commemorate

The ones who are gone

&

Those who love

Some thoughts:

To commemorate requires action. We must put effort into planning, preparing, and enacting some sort of ceremony, creation, or event. Many cultures have traditions for the purpose of remembering those who have exited this life. During Hafiz’s life, he may have participated in rituals that included reading the Quran, giving to the poor, and honoring God on behalf of the deceased. The tombs of some spiritual masters and saints became pilgrimage sites where people would pray and meditate. This does not seem like something Hafiz would have taken part in, but he certainly would have been aware of people who did.

What is striking about this poem is the balance Hafiz creates between our remembrance of our loved ones we have lost and those who are still living. How often do we commemorate the living? Are we putting effort into planning, preparing, and enacting ceremonies, creative works, celebratory events on their behalf? In the hustle of life, sometimes the people in our lives are not made priority and get taken for granted. Hafiz seems to be saying not to wait for a funeral to honor our loved ones. Let’s take the time and make it a priority to celebrate their lives and presence in ours regularly.

My Poem 4:

The Malagasy people
are intimately connected
with decomposition,
since every five years or so
they open the tombs
and bring out the bones
of their ancestors
to wrap in fresh cloth.

Oh, the joy those wilting
bones must feel to dance
among the living in clean silk
garments newly bound,
feast and sing, celebrate reunion,
before returning to slumber.
The long process of disappearing
is lovingly witnessed by the living.

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.

Poetry, Writing

Hafiz – Poem 3

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Image created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompt using AI on Gencraft.

I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 3:

To cut off my desire for life
Would be easy, next to cutting off
Dear
Friends

Some thoughts:

If the desire for life in mystical philosophy is wrapped up in ego, renouncing the world, releasing ambition, etc., then Hafiz is saying that surrendering control is a piece of cake compared to severing relationships with dear friends. And the contrast he is setting up implies that he has no intention of severing ties with those he loves for supposed holiness or spiritual advancement. Perhaps he is even critiquing some of the spiritual asceticism some practices require of their members, like abstinence from human relationships and connection to others. Detachment does not mean abandoning those we love. God is love, so intimacy with others must be sacred.

My Poem 3:

Dissolve the untrue.

The last thing standing is love,

for love is not false.

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.

Essays, Writing

A Court of Silver Flames (ACOTAR Book Review 5)

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All images created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompts using AI on Gencraft.com website.

WARNING – SPOILERS

A Court of Silver Flames, the 5th book in the ACOTAR series, kept me on the edge of my seat. The female-centered, recovery-journey, inner-struggle deep dive is both inspirational and aspirational. I was never made to feel pity for the women fighting to regain their power but something more akin to sisterhood, hope, and absolute celebration. Every step of the way, each woman had to come into her own and claim her strength. Those are the role models girls need today.   

This book is definitely some of the steamiest spiciness out of the five books so far. I was fanning myself a few times. It is more concentrated on Nesta’s story, but all the main characters appear hear and there so we can keep up with their lives, as well. We fear for the lives of several main characters whose love has set them on a straight course for death. I won’t give anything away, but the tension and concern are intense. I’ve grown to love these characters and always yearn for happy endings.  

The newer characters that have been added to our family hold up their end of making us fall in love with them. When they are endangered multiple times, I am guilty of getting pre-mad at Sarah J. Maas. Creating characters for us to bond with only to kill them off would be the grossest form of manipulation and might lead to reader protests in the streets. I kept hoping she would not break my heart.  

Maas, Sarah J. A Court of Silver Flames. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.

Poetry, Writing

Hafiz – Poem 2

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I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 2:

Everyone
Drives by
While I
Walk on alone

Some thoughts:

I can only relate metaphorically to this poem because walking is difficult for me. With my joint degeneration and chronic pain, driving is much more my speed. However, I respect the deeper meanings that might be of the walking-to-the-beat-of-your-own-drum sort of metaphor. If “I” am doing something that seems to be different from “Everyone,” but I believe it to be what is best for me, I must persist, despite the aloneness. Perhaps because of the aloneness.

Sometimes solitude is the best way to connect to purpose, find center, ground. The harried rush of this world can sap our energy and distract us from the quiet inner contemplation that can connect us to our better selves. We cannot be of service to others if we are barreling through life so fast we have lost our own ability to reflect, to ponder, to get to know the quiet of our own minds. It is only here that most of us can hear the still, small voice.

I’m not sure what kind of drivers were racing past Hafiz on his alone walk in the 1300s, but I assume they were carts pulled by horses and people on horseback mostly. Faster than the pace of a walker, but nothing compared to the 80mph drivers on Texas highways. My, the poems he would have written about the rush of life we live today.

My Poem 2:

My H.E.B. has electric shopping carts
for people like me to use in their store.
They are slow, so as not to endanger
other shoppers who could be run over.

They beep loudly and embarrassingly
if I need to back up for overshooting.
They are awkward for direction changes,
and can be the cause of traffic jams.

But I no longer feel anything other than
thankfulness when I drive them to shop.
The lack of pain while choosing for myself
provides autonomy and independence.

I may drag the cord behind me like a tail,
stall and get stranded by a depleted battery,
and back into the occasional display or wall,
but I move at a pace that is mine alone.

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.

Poetry, Writing

Hafiz – Poem 1

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I am reading Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, poetry by Hafiz-e Shirazi. He is challenging me to become more comfortable with ambiguity. I will share his poem and some of my thoughts on his poem (sometimes with the help of experts when the concepts are too hard for me), followed by a poem and some art inspired by his poem.

Hafiz’s Poem 1:

Between these two doors
                                 This caravan

Some thoughts:

The imagery of doors implies entrances and exits, passageways, or boundaries. Two doors suggest pillars of demarcation in time, place, awareness or perhaps binary contrasts. Opposite ends of conceptual delineations like birth and death or past and future seem like reasonable possibilities.

But those don’t seem to be what Hafiz is concerned with. He is pointing out the between. What is happening in the interim, the dash? Of course, the interesting part is the journey. We get so hyper-focused on reaching the destination that we become uncomfortable with the time spent in the now learning to be patient.

I picture a caravan of camels carrying the worldly goods of travelers long distances, the people eager for trade, companionship, good food, fresh water, music, romance, and laughter. It is life in motion. The doors are really of no consequence right now. They are the least of our concern when we have all this living to do.

My Poem 1:

Unmoored, afloat, uncertain if hope
is a delusion or a virtue
stillness sits where ambition
once cracked her knuckles

the in-between is where?
beginning was once easy to define
though ending is unknown
the certainty of it was assumed

now nothing reveals itself as absolute
except this protest march
that might possibly transform
into a celebratory parade

Hafiz. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life. Translated by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023.

All images created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompts using AI on Gencraft.com website.

Poetry, Writing

Childhood

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TRIGGER WARNING: This poem contains references to childhood trauma, gun violence, animal death and desecration, and disturbing imagery involving cruelty to animals. It reflects lived experience and may be distressing for some readers. Please read with care.

Image created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompt using AI on Gencraft.

Apparently, it is not most people’s
experience to be shot at on a
summer morning before the heat
forces children indoors to rest.

I guess we thought it was a mostly
fair fight, since we were lobbing
rocks and they couldn’t hit moving
targets if their lives depended on it.

Two neighbor boys teamed up with
their boredom and a whole summer
of scheming to counter our riotous
fun they were not invited to join.

But they took it too far when they
unburied Daisy Bo Kay, our freshly
dead basset hound, and strung her up
in a tree hoping we’d find her corpse.

She didn’t do anything to deserve
such treatment, just sit and sigh,
howl when we got too rambunctious,
witness the strangeness of our survival.

Poetry, Writing

My Son Trey

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Image created by Rebekah Marshall’s prompt using AI on Gencraft.

My son Trey, short for Trajectory, lives in a parallel universe. With my whiteness stirred in, he is a lighter-skinned miniature version of his father, right down to the little glasses that he’s needed since he started reading at the age of two. He stands in the driveway waiting for the school bus, swishing his skirts back and forth, and my heart aches because I know the teasing he will endure. He is a queen for the Living History Museum whose merits he and his father talked excitedly about while I made the costume, torn between pride that my son’s favorite person is a woman and the compulsion to pressure him to pick a man. This morning as I sip my tea in my present universe, tears spring unbidden at this memory. Here, my history-loving husband and I chose not to have Trey or any other children. Oh, how I miss my sweet boy.