Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST February 4th 2022

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session our text was the poem Broom by Jim Harrison, posted below. 

Our prompt was: Write about remembering you’re alive.

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday February 7th at 6pm EST,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.


Broom by Jim Harrison

To remember you’re alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you’ve made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalian
odor that you are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone’s inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard, as it must.
Now to home without looking back,
enough is enough.
En route buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out the window and begin sweeping.
Sweep until the walls are
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
until the floor disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, return to the cemetery
in evening and wind through the stones
a slow dance of your name visible only to birds.

8 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EST February 4th 2022

  1. Trisha

    The first breath before consciousness
    Coming out from under anesthetic
    Hearing the word “malignant”
    Hearing the word “cured”
    Hearing your birth name spoken again
    Feeling present in a moment
    The second after the near miss
    The moment before the crash
    This moment
    Three deep breaths

    Liked by 2 people

      • Scarlet Kinney

        Yes, what a powerfully expressed image of a moment of grace, of returning to consciousness of the body (life) after the kind of death (loss of consciousness of the body) that anesthesia can cause.

        Like

  2. About remembering you are alive~~~

    Time has stood still.
    Life at a distance.
    Long silent pauses.
    Breathing in and out slowly.
    Waiting for a change in the direction of the wind,
    a change in the forces of living.

    But why should I wait, there has been so much wasted time already.
    I run to the grassy knoll and shout…”I am alive. Life is for the living and so I shall live.”
    Here’s to beginning anew, here’s to living a robust life,
    as I raise my glass of wine to the heavens.
    And the clouds part and the sun shines brightly and I hear the vibrant song of the Carolina wren.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Scarlet Kinney

      I love the image of choosing to live robustly and the clouds parting and the sun shining through and the song of the Carolina wren in response to your crying out that you shall live! It feels like the larger consciousness in which we exist heard your words and supported them.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Scarlet Kinney

    Floating through the Great Mystery
    Between life and death,
    In flight from trauma that threatened
    To deprive the body of life,
    I chose life, trauma and all,
    Over the death towards which I was traveling,
    Because I remembered
    My body’s desire.
    It’s passion.
    It’s joy in living,
    And the black-eyed junco sang of my return.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Elizabeth

    Remember You’re Alive

    Live your life fully.
    Feel it.
    Hear it.
    Smell it.
    Touch it.
    Taste it.
    Do this with passion and intensity.
    Do you not merely walk through it,
    But take that running leap and fly.

    Liked by 1 person

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