Baskets • Poetry Prompt

I love the look of baskets lined up on open shelves; some duplicates, others unique in shape or color. Each one issues invitations. Some say, “look and see what I hold within.” Others beckon, “fill me.” 

 

I grew up hearing the phrase, “A place for everything and everything in it’s place.” This led to sorting and sifting and organizing in a way that compartmentalized life. Work was deposited in a basket. Family had a basket. Play and enjoyment was dropped into a small basket of its own. Jesus had a basket that we pulled out on Sundays, or at best a few minutes a day when we prayed; we certainly try to keep our spiritual life contained and isolated, but shouldn’t it infiltrate every space, every place?

 

And what of pain or illness? No matter how hard our attempts to close the lid of the basket we place it in, the contents spill over into every other basket in our lives.

 

Is there a basket big enough to hold all of ourselves? Wins, losses, employment, recreation, love, sorrow and joy, wellness and sickness? A God-created space that He fully inhabits?

 

A basket for our life. Whole, complete. Integration instead of compartmentalization. Yes!

 

Mary Oliver’s words spoke directly into my spirit:

 

“Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.”

In her poem, Primogeniture, Julie Agoo writes of a multi-purpose basket:

 

someone put that basket under the dresser.

Chose to. Bent. Kicked it maybe.

Not the first time, it’s spent

years there, unthought of; only some time out

Of exile chasing a life

in the sun. The blond wood is well-stained

for all that. It has held sandwiches, beer, a knife,

sunscreen and clippers. Diapers. Once,

a specimen of toadstool that ate that hole

right through the end. But it was strong enough!

I remember it full of gloves and a Peterson’s Guide,

peonies roughly shoved through the upright handles.

And her hand pulling the weight, and the shadow it cast

on the terrace—like a sundial—

a penny from the war lay in the fretwork,

I remember that, working its way in or out—

And, lifting it from her, the light

Weight that made my hand feel light.

That’s just as clear today as when

she came in from the garden late

and put that burden down right here.

 

Perhaps the following questions can help, as you ponder baskets, letting words come to shape into poems.

Let the words come and fall in place. Play with them. Feel the weight of them. When you are ready, share them with us.

Here is the poem my heart responded with:

 

I took my basket to the shore

collecting pebbles, sea glass

worn smooth and pale

I carried that basket to the forest

adding pine cones, leaves

curled and bright

Next I took it to the mountains

trying to capture sighs, wonder

awed by glory

Basket in hand I

journeyed home, unsure

was I too small, or

too large to fit and fill

this life, still weaving

twig by twig