#adele kenny

[dabiconcordia]

The Trains

We felt them first. Fingers pressed to the rails,     a dull rumble filled our hands and hummed into our arms before the cone of light, the great clatter

of metal against metal. Trestled high, above the     bridge on Grand Avenue, we knew those tracks went on forever, between trees that lined the ties

like stations of the cross. The hill was forbidden but     holy, thick with clover, ripe with berries in spring. The year I was nine, an April blizzard swept the

sky and we went to the trains in the dark. The wires     strummed into sparks, the rails were a dazzle of shadows. Our faces – ghosts of our selves – reflected

in every train car window, lines of breath etched in     passing glass. Above us, chimney smoke hung like smears of candle grease among the clouds.

We were grubby and poor, but we believed. We said     our prayers, ate fish on Fridays, and never rode those trains. We could only kneel in something like

wonder, something like praise, and wait for the     tracks’ reverent shudder. The memory is a gauze engine that time blows through and keeps me small. by Adele Kenny

[tlhopkinson]

Prompt #349 – Writing in Stressful Times: The Covid-19 Pandemic via Adele Kenny

Adele Kenny has a wonderfully inspiring poetry blog The Music In It: Adele Kenny’s Poetry Blog chock full of over 300 writing prompts, including her most recent post entitled Prompt #349 – Writing in Stressful Times: The Covid-19 Pandemic. She gives helpful commentary, quotes, resources, and several writing exercises and/or prompts in each post.

You can scroll through her past prompts by visiting…

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[whisperthatruns]

“In those days a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” ---Luke 2: 1-7 It is quiet now, the caravans still, the road empty. Travelers, weary with walking, sleep in their beds. The innkeeper's wife steps through the courtyard door, stands for a moment in the winter air and rubs her hands against the chill. She smoothes the folds of her robe and looks up at the strange new star. It frightens her, the way its light fills the twisted cypress and whitens the road from Galilee. It dims the lamps, scours the grit- laden wind as if night and noon have met in a gilded witness above Judea's hills. She thinks of the couple, how tired they seemed. There was no room left but the stable. Their child will come soon, she knows the signs. In her own bed, the light keeps her awake. Baking bread, sweeping floors, childbirth---these are things she understands. But that star, that star! Her husband moves beside her, mutters into his dream. A newborn’s cry rises from broken straw--- off in the fields a shepherd calls to his lambs.

Adele Kenny, “The Innkeeper’s Wife”

[dk-thrive]

it’s hard to be grateful when you stand on the edge of crash and burn. One day you’re simply living your life and the next you’re faced with something you didn’t anticipate and aren’t sure you can deal with

For me, and I suspect for many, gratitude is a necessary part of the process. Of course, it’s hard to be grateful when you stand on the edge of crash and burn. One day you’re simply living your life and the next you’re faced with something you didn’t anticipate and aren’t sure you can deal with. It happens to all of us sooner or later, in one way or another. Surviving becomes part of the trek, but it’s a lonely walk no matter how much support you have. Faced with fear, grief, loss, or illness, where do you go? You either give into the darkness of it all, or you look for a way out. Acceptance is part of the way back up—a grace that can lead to gratitude. (Stay with me, I’m working toward rejoicing.) There’s so much for which to be grateful (one more hour, one more day). Learning how to be grateful is another instrument in the survival toolbox. If you can manage gratefulness, you can begin to move away from the damages of what you work to survive. It’s kind of like when the feeling of the subject matter becomes the poem. You remember how to live, you remember what happiness is, and that projects itself backward and forward. Slowly, you begin to rejoice in whatever happiness and love you can find. What do we live for? From the poem:

Grace is acceptance—

all of it, whatever is—as

in we live for this: love

and gratitude enough.

~ Adele Kenny

[ronk]

Guest Post on 'The Music In It'

Guest Post on ‘The Music In It’

I wrote a guest post for Adele Kenny’s poetry blog, The Music In It, about my daily writing practice this year and the ronka poems.

It is a good exercise to get “meta” about your writing once in awhile and think about what you write and why. Treat yourself as an assignment from that poetry class and look at the themes that run through your poems, the language etc.  (I didn’t realize how many…

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[memali]

Guest Blog Post, "Love in the Animal Kingdom," at Adele Kenny's Poetry Blog!

Adele kindly asked me to post a prompt to her lovely poetry blog, The Music In It. I had fun with it and offered four ways in to the ever-elusive love poem.

Find the post here. I hope it helps you generate some poems!

[lovethispoem]

Survivor by Adele Kenny

A jay on the fence preaches to a squirrel. I watch the squirrel quiver, the way squirrels do--its whole body flickers. I'm not sure why this reminds me of when I was five and something died in our drain spout. Feather or fur, I watched my father dig it out, knowing (as a child knows) how much life matters. I have seen how easily autumn shakes the yellow leaves, how winter razes the shoals of heaven. I have felt love's thunder and moan, and had my night on the wild river. I have heard the cancer diagnosis with my name in it. I know what mercy is and isn't. Morning breaks from sparrows' wings (life's breezy business), and I'm still here, still in love with the sorrows, the joys-- days like this, measured by memory, the ticking crickets, the pulse in my wrist.