French Sentences

My fellow Muser, Kathy, is in the next room playing a game she calls "French sentences": concocting seventeen-syllable haiku about her experiences in France--a little exercise to get her poetic energies flowing. 

It sounds like fun on this lazy, post-French-lunch Sunday afternoon, so I'll give it a try:

Traversing the forest in the rain, I arrive home cold and happy.


Loaded brush poised over a blank page; maybe I should go for a walk.


We toss the empty bottles and climb the slanting stairs to our cold beds.

Send me your French sentences here.

Cubserviès

This afternoon, during a rain break, I headed off for a hike with a fellow Muser, poet Katharine Whitcomb. Our destination was Cubserviès, a tiny hamlet clinging to the mountain rock. When we were halfway there, it began to rain. Then it poured. By the time we arrived, we were soaked. But, drenched and cold as we were, we ran through the hamlet and exclaimed over the views, including the Cascade de Cubserviès, one of France's lesser-known ("secret") waterfalls. 

Take a peek at Katharine's blog "Poetry Is Cool."

Poetic Space: David Whyte

It's dawned on me that I'm not going to get a lot of "work" done at La Muse. Instead, inspiration and revelation are coming at me so quickly that all I can do is sit back and let it happen. I can feel myself changing shape. Whoever I am at the end of the retreat will be the one who will roll up her sleeves and set to "work."

Poet David Whyte speaks of this transformation in "Revelation Must Be Terrible":

Revelation must be
   terrible with no time left
to say goodbye.

Imagine that moment
   staring at the still waters
with only the brief tremor

of your body to say
   you are leaving everything
and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard, but you know,
   at least we are exiled together.
When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for
   the first time...

Read the full poem here.

Join me for Whyte's seminar "What to Remember When Waking" in Vancouver on November 20.


Here is sample of Whyte (on transformation in Rilke's "The Swan"):

Visit David Whyte's web site here.