Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT August 26th 2022

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem Cicadas at the End of Summer by Martin Walls, posted below. 

Our prompt was: Write about something forgotten and remembered.

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 September 12th at 6 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.


Cicadas at the End of Summer by Martin Walls

Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin,
As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of
titanium;
They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern
slowing into town.

But all you ever see is the silence.
Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.
With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do
just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space
museum —

What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory;
The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned

The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk
in the bottom of a mug.
Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with
lineman's pliers.
A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry
in Brighton.

Credit: www.poetryfoundation.org

11 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 12PM EDT August 26th 2022

  1. About something forgotten and remembered~~~

    A warm summer evening, leaves beginning to fall from the branches, the garden crops drying up and returning back to the earth, the cicadas bursting with energy and uttering their ear-shattering songs. Somehow they know what’s coming and sound the alarm.

    All signs that summer is coming to an end and we are to enter the subdued season of autumn… a time of recollection of life’s adventures.

    I recall my childhood growing up on a farm where each summer day brought a new adventure… finding painted box turtles in the garden patch, collecting fireflies in a jar, and smelling the sweet smell of my mom’s roses. A time of sweet innocence.

    A collection of memories that warm my heart, but what is also true, is they are indeed memories of the past, from a time that was.
    Time to forge new memories to warm my spirit on those cold and dreary days of winter that are yet to come.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Elizabeth

    Sibling Baggage

    As adults we can focus on the negatives in our history,
    Which strangles all the positive memories.
    As siblings we never forget,
    We schlep our luggage from childhood into adulthood.
    Can we ever throw out the suitcases,
    So we can move on with maturity?

    Liked by 2 people

    • michele348

      Elizabeth, we are all works in progress, with a foundation built in our childhood. Sometimes, those foundations can be a bit unsteady and so we try to steady the bedrock as we mature… sometimes this process does indeed require great effort.

      Like

  3. Scarlet Kinney

    Small things…
    The way the sun struck their golden hair
    The salt scent of the blue-green crashing sea
    Fragments of light, color, sound, scent
    Gather slowly, each returning to consciousness
    In its own time, tantalizing, teasing memory
    Until a wavering image suddenly takes form
    A mirage of a day spent by the sea in my youth
    With my sisters, both gone now
    Except in the sudden flash of ephemeral visions.

    Liked by 1 person

    • michele348

      Scarlet…Scents and sights crawl out from our memory bank just at the right time when our spirit needs replenishment, sometimes quite unexpected but nonetheless very much needed.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Scarlet Kinney

        Michele, yes, you’re so right. Always unexpected, often seeming disconnected, until another sight, scent, sound floats into consciousness, linking to others and the full memory is revealed to us. I love the mystery of that process, and the reminders of who we once were, and perhaps are becoming again.

        Liked by 1 person

  4. Helen Mia

    Write about something forgotten and remembered….

    She had forgotten that she’d rather not remember her name
    there was no name as her name a long time ago ended
    with a question mark
    It happened when she was at school age 13 then

    What’s that Watt Watt?
    When ever she held up her hand
    to ask the teacher a question
    What’s that Watt Watt? They chanted
    slamming the wooden desktops
    up- down – up – down –up down – up-down

    Remembering names, Scottish names are linked to Dock Martin boots
    Writing love letters in the classroom to Bobby B
    dreaming of kissing him under the chestnut tree
    Her name, love and Dock Martin boots all merged into one

    Her name had to be banished
    A new name revealed itself
    That name belonged to someone else

    Liked by 2 people

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