Happy New Year my fellow poets. I hope that 2018 brings you oodles of creativity and that your muse has a sparkle in her eye along the road ahead.

I would like us to take a look at the word Grace for our opening Poetics prompt of 2018. Of course the word is very familiar to us all as we have our very own Grace Guevara here at the bar. How well named she is. Thank You for all you do for us Grace.

What does the word Grace conjure up for you? How does it manifest in your life? In your writing? How might you weave it into a poem?

Rumi did it like this.

Zero Circle

Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
To gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we say No, we don’t see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Besides ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.

Walt Whitman wrote the following:

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination,
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,
force, fascination?
Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action,
ambition, laughter,
The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and
restoring darkness.

So the task at hand is to pen a poem using the word Grace.

Here is a video from a chapter of the wonderful movie by the One Giant Leap. This chapter is entitled Grace. Thought provoking watch.