A Good Stretch of Poetry Days

The past few days have been a good poetry days, in a more well-rounded sense--by which I mean, I've been doing more than just writing down a line or two.  Let me capture what a good stretch of poetry days looks like:

--A few months ago, I had an idea for a poem, Jesus buying a fixer-upper of a house.  I didn't do anything with this idea since I first had it (in late April, as evidenced by this blog post).  But this week, I returned to it, and I'm really delighted with the surprises that the poem offers.

--Yesterday, I read a volume of poems.  My students were working through a time management module and had to enter due dates into calendars and planners.  I thought they would blaze through the assignment, but only a few of them did.  I went back to my office to get something to read.

--That book was Donna Vorreyer's Unrivered.  What an amazing book!  Vorreyer explores themes of aging and the natural world and relationships, and many of her poems have theological imagery and ideas that I didn't expect.  She's also skilled at a variety of forms.  It's a book that demands a re-read, which I hope to do soon.

--I read most of the book in one sitting, and I returned to read the rest of it later in the afternoon.  It's always a very different experience to read an entire collection in one day, and I'm glad I did it yesterday.

--I had a late afternoon phone call after the Endorsement Panel yesterday.  I was invited to be the official poet, a poet laureate of sorts, of the Southeastern Synod's Synod Assembly.  What a cool possibility!

--My mom heard me say that I was invited to be poet laureate of the Synod, which would also be an interesting possibility.

--This morning I returned to my poem about Jesus working on the fixer-upper.  Here's what I wrote, a stanza which surprised me--I didn't know I was going to write it until the lines flowed out:

Jesus wipes down every surface,
scrubbing when necessary.
He paints the walls in a soothing
version of the color that first flooded
the world when God said,
“Let there be light.”