Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Words May 28, 2010

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Pondering,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 6:20 am
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Words.

We fill our days with them.  We speak them.  We read them.  They shout at us from billboards.  They whisper at us from between the notes of a song. 

 We celebrate upon a baby’s first words.  We’re empowered when we first read words.  We grieve when a stroke steals words.  We hover around a bedside to hear last words.

This weekend is a celebration of words.  I will be attending the Shuswap Writers’ Festival.  I had just finished Grace Awakening last year when I attended my first writing conference here in the Shuswap.  I thought meeting some professional writers and  mingling with the writing community was bound to be a good experience.  It was all  new. I wasn’t sure what a blue pencil was, and why I’d want to participate in it.  It was enlightening.  Every workshop offered gems.  I hung on the edge of my seat listening to Andrea Spalding share her experiences and work.  Words filled the weekend and led to more words.  On the basis of my experience I was encouraged to be brave  and travel to attend the huge Surrey International Writers’ Festival 5 months later.  That conference  was also phenomenally inspiring and led to some new writing friends and connections.

Now I will be hanging on the edge of my seat again.  What words will be shared this weekend?  Will a book sell?  Will a career launch?  Who will I meet?  What will I learn?   I am eager to meet the professionals and soak up as many of their words as I can.  I’m hoping to hear some encouraging words.

Words are waiting to change my world again.  Whose words willl they be?

 

The last year May 27, 2010

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 4:53 am
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4 weeks until exams start.  Yikes.  Another school year coming to an end, and for my graduating students, their last year of high school.  Every year at this time, while I’m being exasperated about how  my students are having so much difficulty focusing on the academics that actually passing the course is in jeopardy, I remember my own grad year.

I wasn’t focused on academics at this time of the year either.  I was completely absorbed in the absolutely miraculous fact that a visitor was coming to be my grad date.  Not just any boy, but The Boy.  The object of 8 years obsessive adoration.   After years of brief summer visits and letters, he was flying into town to spend 5 entire days with me.  It was as if a lifetime of dreams was hanging on my graduation weekend.  Against such heady competition, final exams faded into insignificance.  Can I blame my students for their distraction?  I spent the last month of my high school time in a fog of possibility.  Who knew what graduation would bring?  Which of my students is set to see dreams die or fly?

I am frustrated as my grade 12s struggle to get their work done amid hair appointments, gown shopping and dating discussions.  I wish that doing brilliantly on their English exam was a priority, but I’m realistic too. I sigh in sympathy, because I remember far too clearly that graduation celebrations aren’t always about the grades.

I’m sympathetic, but I just hope they all pass so they don’t have to come back to me next year!

 

journey May 26, 2010

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:30 am

journeyjourney

 

journey

 o   n 

           y our

          jo      y

.

.

A little concrete poem on the theme of “Journey” submitted to Monday Poetry Potluck January 9, 2011.

If you are visiting here from the Potluck, please include the link to your own submission in your comment.  That will make it easier for others to visit you.

 

Layer a shimmy onto your life May 24, 2010

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 4:52 am
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In belly dance, as you advance in skills, it becomes time to start layering. It’s not enough that your hands are zilling a rhythm while your arms are making a pattern, your chest is moving in one pattern, your hips are moving in a different pattern, and your legs are traveling you around your dance area, perhaps with a few kicks thrown in for emphasis. No. To all that you must add a shimmy.

You’d think that there would be quite enough movement without needing anything else, wouldn’t you? Truthfully, if you were watching a dancer who was using terrific technique, you’d be unable to take your eyes off her if she was doing all that. However, if another dancer came in, doing all the same moves but layering the shimmy on top, you would notice the difference. You’d see that all the other great moves, complicated though they are, were intensified and polished with the addition of that shimmy.  Those vibrating hips would make you smile, lean in closer, and sigh with delight.

Although a shimmy can be an exhausting move, it is possible with discipline to train it to go on auto-pilot. When a shimmy is on auto-pilot the whole dance changes, because it can go everywhere.   It adds a vivacity and intensity to your dancing when a shimmy is  layered on top.

Life is just the same.

No matter how much we’re doing in our day, if we layer on a little shimmy, everything is improved. A little extra physical activity, a little pep, a little sparkle that captures some extra enthusiasm makes all the difference in our own day, but can also improve the day for others we meet.  If we shake things up by adding a little extra effort, eventually that’s our norm, like a shimmy on auto-pilot, and everything we touch becomes more vibrant because of it.

So go ahead. Layer a shimmy on everything in your life and see what happens!

 

like my heart May 22, 2010

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:09 am
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This was a ‘magnetic poetry’ demo created on the overhead projector with a handful of random words cut  from other works.  It was a model exercise for my English class back last March. It’s an example of playing with words and juxtaposition.  Meaning is abstract.

Like my heart’s guess
the music was spread
and thought thrilled
T’was words that
     crawled              cried
screamed        turned
               blazed
and came away
             blind.

2009-03

 

rose blossom tanka May 18, 2010

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:01 am
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the scent of roses
sends sweet lingering kisses
drifting on the breeze,
soft sighing in evening air,
whisp’ring gentle caresses.

 

Running from the train May 16, 2010

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:23 am
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Running from the train, angel
Wings flapping furiously
As it eats up the track behind you
Fly angel fly

There’s a clattering, rattling
Horror roaring after you
Angel racing against a speeding destiny
Just get off the easy path you’re treading
Leap to freedom
Or another kind of freedom will mow you down

Run from the train, angel.
Fly like Pegasus above danger.
Be.
Live to race the passing engines
from the safety of sidings and pastures.

Fly angel, fly

© S L Bird
2009-10-08
for Kim

 

musing on muses May 14, 2010

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Poetry,Pondering,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 4:01 am
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Are there reluctant muses? How many muses are embarrassed or dissatisfied with their role as someone else’s creative inspiration? Whatever the real nature of the relationship between the people involved, the creative one takes the facts of the other and covers individual identity with musical notes, pieces of paper, or splashes of paint. Reality becomes illusion.

A muse is a creation of aspiration on the journey to inspiration. That they may walk, talk, breathe, sing, dance or act is extraneous to the process. The muse simply exists as a precipice from which the imagination can leap. If the muse is worthy, the leap is not downward, toward the heavy reality of life, but upward, into the dreamlike world of possibility. Once gliding on the currents of the muse, the creator may stay in the air for years or even decades on the flow of ideas, images, and imaginings

While the real life person ages, decays, and even dies, the muse lives on in perpetual youth. The ephemeral something that creates the muse is extemporal. This is why Petrarch was able to write over three hundred sonnets to Laure, even after her death. Reports suggest that the two had never actually even met, and yet the dream of her fueled Petrarch’s writing for decades after his first glimpse of her. I understand his obsession. My own muse is a memory wrapped in a dream and tied with a reverie. There’s no accounting for the flashes that make a moment into a poem, a  nuance into a novel or a suggestion into a song.

From delusion
to illusion,
with the inspiration
comes the aspiration
for imagination
to become creation.

 

wonder (a love poem) May 13, 2010

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:43 am
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Somedays as you sleep
I look at you
and I wonder,
Did I really do this?
You slumber while I lie
among your fumes and rumbles.
Curling next to you,
You wrap your arms around me,
pulling me close you murmur into my ear.

As I mold in your embrace
I wonder
that I really did.

28-01-2009

 

Seizing the dream May 10, 2010

Filed under: Pondering,Reading — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:01 am
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Before I had the blog up and running, I was writing blog entries. Here’s one from a month ago.

April 11, 2010
Dream that dream

Yesterday I picked up the unauthorized biography of Susan Boyle by Alice Montgomery, called Dreams Can Come True. Today I was reading the back. It begins, “On 11 April 2009, forty-eight year old spinster Susan Magdalane Boyle stepped out on to the stage of Britain’s Got Talent to jeers and sniggers.” I’m sure you’ve seen the You Tube video. It probably hit you in the gut just as it hit me and thousands (if not millions) of people around the world. We know Susan Boyle’s story by now.

Check the date. April 11, 2009. Exactly one year ago today shy Susan Boyle, unemployed, gathered her courage dared the “jeers and sniggers” to stand on that stage and take another stab at her dream. She opened her mouth and captivated the world. Look what has happened in that year.

She has rocketed from obscurity to world renown. She has travelled the world singing to thousands of people, and broken records for pre-order CD sales. She has been interviewed, photographed, and become the subject of an unauthorized biography.

What a difference a year makes.

In a year, a baby can be conceived, carried, delivered. A book can be conceived, written, published and on book shelves. A hundred pounds can be lost at a healthy two pounds a week. A student can earn an A and secure a scholarship. A career can be made. A dream can come true.

What will happen to you in the next year? What can you do to make your dreams come true? Are you brave enough to take the steps to see your dreams realized by this time next year? You don’t need New Year’s Eve to make a life change, spring is a wonderful time to make a new beginning.

Is it time to seize your dream?