I spent the weekend in a place of incredible beauty. The company was wonderful, the food was great. I was doing the things I love to do, singing, chanting, being. What more could I ask? I could ask for a mind that would stop thinking, stop worrying, let me rest.
What better subject to address in my second Writing 201 assignment: “Write a limerick about a journey.”
Limericks are traditionally composed of five lines of verse.
The traditional rhyming scheme of a limerick is a a b b a — the first two lines rhyme, then the next two, and the final verse rhymes with the first couplet.
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My First Limerick
Journey into the mind, dark and dreary.
Caught in the maze, alone and teary. Where is the peace? Where is the release? Bring me out of this state so bleary.
As a student nurse, I was most interested in Maternal-Newborn nursing, particularly Labor and Delivery. After I graduated in 1970, I spent the next 17 years working in hospital obstetric units, earning a Masters of Nursing degree in Parent-Child Nursing, teaching Maternal- Newborn nursing at the University of Washington and working as the Maternal-Newborn Clinical Nurse Specialist at Swedish Hospital Medical Center in Seattle. Even when I switched to psychiatric nursing in 1987, the therapy modality I used was developmental in nature.
So last Friday, when I saw a news story about a baby who had recently been born still in its amniotic sac I was mesmerized. As I watched the video, I sensed I was getting a glimpse of something very sacred.
Another event that was happening at the same time was that I was preparing to take Blogging University’s Writing 201: Poetry class. I’ve never written poetry before and have no idea if I have any talent for it, but I wanted to give it a try. Our first assignment was emailed to us last night. We are to write a Haiku focusing on some aspect of water. Examples the instructor gave were “A murky puddle or a glistening lake. Amniotic fluid or your grandfather’s glass of Seltzer. A bath, a hose, an oasis.” A Haiku consists of “three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.”
When I read the instructions, the baby in the amniotic sac came to mind. Below you will find the video I had seen, and my first attempt at writing a haiku!
Haiku
fetus warm, contained
inside, new life unfolding parents eagerly waiting
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I could have also said:
fetus warm, contained
inside, new life unfolding
God’s gift in human form
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it’s writing.
Or the ball can guess where it’s going next.
— Rumi
From Open Secret: Versions of Rumi by John Moyne
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Jelaluddin Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. (Biographical information and picture are from Wikepedia)
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving — it doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.
— Rumi
As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky, p. 67
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Jelaluddin Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. (Biographical information and picture are from Wikepedia)
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”-William Shakespeare
Living, Learning and Letting Go 