Michelle Barnes, over at Today's Little Ditty, challenged her
readers to write a five word poem on Friday about "peace" as a warm
up to creating poems for the International Day of Peace.
I know. It's Sunday. Let's
just pretend it's Friday, m'kay?
I've written a piece or ten
about peace (Heh. See what I did there!?) or the feeling of peace or the lack
of peace or wanting peace. And actually, now that I'm thinking about
peace pieces, two of those poems have been prompted by Michelle's challenges.
And looking back at those poems, they both had to do with the woods.
"At Maybury"? Woods.
The woods. I am a fan.
The thing with five word poems
is that they don't leave much room for wordiness. Any room. At all.
And I'm a wordy girl with a struggle to express myself in small doses. I
did try during poetry month this year. It gave me fits but I constrained
myself to 30 days of tiny Twitter poems. Hard.
But kinda fun in a stressful, word nerd way.
So for Michelle's challenge, I
created a concrete-ish poem. Other poets
managed to write five words poems without the need to add a graphic element, so
you really should go and check out the ones posted on her site.
One of my favorite Bible
passages is Psalm 46, particularly verse ten: "...be still, and know
that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in
the earth."
The woods.
Being still.
Remembering God is big,
Creation shouts His praise, and that sadness and mourning and the atrocities of
this world, though inevitable, are not forever.
Because Jesus.
Because Jesus.
The woods are my happy
place and my peaceful place and the place I have the greatest chance of being
still without much effort. But when I consider the words from Psalm 46
and take a moment, pause, be still, it doesn't matter where I am. Perfect peace doesn't have to wait for a perfect world. Because the
Word is powerful.
But the woods help.
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