Hello everyone, this is Paul welcoming you to the bar on my first night as an ‘official’ member of the team.

Thank You All for affording me such a warm invitation into this community of poets.

I am honored and humbled in equal measure.

So it is with no surprise then that my first official bar prompt for this Tuesday Poetics night is to be ‘Community.’

Let me begin by sharing a most beautiful piece of writing by Starhawk

“We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been. A place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time.

Community.

Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats.

Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power.

Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter.

A circle of friends.

Some place where we can be free.”

 

Inspiring right?

So where do you find community in your life? In real time? With people? Family and friends, clubs and associations? In nature? With animals? In cyber-space? With birds of a feather? With the world? In your country? In the pub? 😉

Here’s another morsel to whet your appetites.

Ode to Wine by Pablo Neruda

“Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.

At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.

Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.

A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.

Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.

I like on the table,
when we’re speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.

Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.”

 

 

Take a moment to reflect on where community shows up in your life and how.

Write a poem with the word community at it’s heart.

As always, please do observe the “rules of conduct” for dVerse – and for those of you new to dVerse, here’s what we hope everyone does:

• Write a poem, as the prompt suggests, and post it to your blog.
• Click on Mr. Linky to add your name and enter the direct URL to your poem
• On your blog, please provide a link back to dVerse: perhaps a statement at the end of the poem indicating this prompt and linking to dVerse. Others us dVerse as a tag as well. This enables more folks to view our prompts, and thus increases the readers of your poems too.
• If you promote your poem on social media, use the tag #dverse poets
• And most importantly, please do stop by to read responses to the prompt and add a short comment or reaction. Everyone likes to be appreciated! The prompt is “live” for several days – as you’ll notice by the comments you’ll receive – so do stop by several times, and read some of the latecomers too!

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