The Inklings challenge this month comes from Linda Mitchell. She charged us with writing “a poem that includes the idea of percentage or percent. Percentages are all around us in recipes, prices, assessments, statistics. Include the idea of percentage in your poem in some way.”
I put off this challenge for a while until a muse slapped me in the face from Brain Pickings (which is now called The Marginalian). This article is beautifully written: Every Loss Reveals What We Are Made Of by Maria Popova. Incorporating inspiration from Maria Popova and a quote from Maria Mitchell, I crafted a poem container of loss, aging, and rebirth.
We Reach Forth
The way we stand at the mirror
and see strands of hair
overnight lose their color,
devoid of fresh light
gone gray in the way
a leaf loses the green of chlorophyll.We lose our vigor.
The way I collapse on the sofa
after the grandchildren leave–
how it sags from years
of holding us.The way, like branches, we reach forth
and strain every nerve,
but we seize only a bit of the curtain
that hides the infinite from us.*How 96 percent of the universe
is dark matter
invisible to us, how can we know
what tomorrow will bring?The way we shed more color,
fall to the ground,
crush into mulch,
then hatch from darkness
and find light
find light
find light.*Maria Mitchell
Margaret Simon, draft
Below are links to my fellow Inklings and their responses to the % challenge:
Linda@A Word Edgewise
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly@Nix the Comfort Zone
Catherine@Reading to the Core
Mary Lee @ A(n)other Year of Reading
Reflections on the Teche 
Beautiful, Margaret – may we always reach forth! xo
Margaret, this is beautiful. I love the image of the sofa that “sags from years of holding us.” (And I will think of it each time my grandchildren leave and I collapse.) That sofa provides a sense of grounding as you move to the unknown and ultimately toward light. I feel like I’ve traveled on an unexpected journey and have been dropped off in a hopeful place. Thank you for this poem.
Susan, I am watching your journey with a sense of wonder and expectancy. Dare I hope for the life of an author after teacher?
Lovely, Margaret. As Susan pointed out, the image of the sofa made me take pause. “years of holding us” – our weight, our dreams, our joys and sorrows. I said goodbye to two loveseats this week, and I was surprised at the feeling of sadness that came as they were carried out. Now I understand. Thanks so much for sharing this.
Your poem is beautiful and I love the repetition in the last stanza. Believe me I know the collapse on the sofa routine, though as they get older it seems easier now. I love how you show us the life cycle and hope.
Can so relate to this, beautiful Margaret. (Though not the grandkids.) Lovely refrain to finish. Look to the light – and sparkle as you do, with those precious kiddles.
Powerful poem Margaret! I like how you metaphorically bring in percentages in the beginning stanzas, it adds even more to your “96 percent of the universe” stanza. And I too could feel the weight of your lovely sofa, thanks!
I loved that article in The Marginalian, and I am in awe of how you captured the FEEL of it in your poem. I love the repetition of “The way…” throughout the poem. All if it is inevitable — the greying, the sagging, the loss…but also, and importantly, the light with which you end.
Your critique was a great help. Thanks.
Margaret, the muse sat on your shoulder and shined the light for you to compose a gorgeous poem that retraces your ideas. I particularly liked the image of graying hair. I can so relate to that. We shed more color as life goes on in cyclical fashion yet we continue to search for light amidst darkness. Your poem is beautifully laid out with such hope at the end.
The hatching…Margaret, this is stunning. Thank you for this.
This poem is so gorgeous, Margaret! You’ve written something that I’ll return to again and again for inspiration and to linger in the quiet beauty of those final lines.
I was struck by this stanza:
How 96 percent of the universe
is dark matter
invisible to us, how can we know
what tomorrow will bring?
You’ve captured the sense of loss with aging, but wonder, too.
“…and find light, find light, find light.”
The echoing reverberation of the way things go to dust and the way they begin again is a truly beautiful meditation in poetry. And you got all this out of percents!? I stand in awe!
The poem fits that darkness in the picture beautifully, Margaret, and your “How 96 percent of the universe/is dark matter” tiptoes in for us all to respond, probably unique to each of us. We can choose to “reach forth” & be the better for it. You’ve shown us both sides so artistically!
My husband and I spent almost ten hours with the three grand boys yesterday. Thanks goodness that Grandpa is my sitting buddy, although he doesn’t do much sitting. Lovely image of hatching from darkness to finding light.
Quintessential Margaret…truth, beauty, and always light. What an amazing poem this is. I hope you read it at your Thanksgiving table. It is absolutely appropriate and a gift to your girls and their families.
This is stunning, Margaret. I the repetition of “find light” at the end. It becomes a mantra, reminding us to keep moving, despite the losses. I chuckled when you said you inspiration came from one of Maria Papova’s recent posts because I also loved that piece and toyed around with writing a poem based on it. A draft is still in my notebook, but I was 100% out of time to share it this week.
a) thank you for alerting me to the fact that although I support Maria Popova monthly, I have not been receiving and reading her posts–and this one was a doozy.
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b) I am having trouble finding words for how important this poem feels, how its structure carries both the effort of living and the effortless necessity of loss, discovery, the curtain of dark matter.
Wow, Margaret, this is so rich and beautiful. Like Catherine, I was struck with the repetition at the end “find light.” Also, powerful is the title “We Reach Forth” and the repetition in each stanza of “The way…” Brilliant, all.
Margaret, this is such a beautiful, powerful poem from start to finish. The repetition is used so well, and the way you included that 96 percentage is perfect. Isn’t it fascinating how a challenging prompt can force you to dig and create such beauty? And, oh, how I thank you for ending so hopefully with light.
This is an absolutely beautiful poem, Margaret. It speaks so much to me of life, aging, loss, and rebirth. Your poem is also very timely for me with the recent health problems aging has brought to my mom, and thus, to our family. Thank you for sharing the light – all the light!
I love the way you’ve connected all these elements and turned them into pictures of growing older — and shown how growing older is something beautiful in the process. Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
Margaret, wow! After reading your poem, reading your article by Maria Popova, reading about Maria Mitchell, and reading her quotations I am in awe and kind of speechless. Weaving in the knowledge of both Maria’s with your gifted writing has resonated with me and made me cry from the beauty of your words. You should publish this poem. You immediately hooked me from your first two lines. How you have this line “We lose our vigor.” as it’s own stanza makes the effect of those words grab me, jump up and shout at me, and make me realize even more how I want to recover mentally and physically from a recent and ongoing illness.
I don’t have grandchildren, yet, but tonight I collapsed in my sagging reclining chair, which I nursed both my children in, and I knew exactly what you meant. I love your comparison to trees in these lines, “like branches, we reach forth/and strain every nerve” and I feel those lines. Great how you weaved in your percentage challenge and asked “how can we know/what tomorrow will bring?”
These lines jump up again and shout “we shed more color,/fall to the ground,/
crush into mulch”; then those lines lead us to the hope and joy of “then hatch from darkness/and find light/find light/find light. I like the effect of the repetition of your title, the repetition and refrain of “The way” and how it invited me and made me want to continue to read, but I would have continued to read anyway. Thank you, Margaret for sharing the journey of your stunning poem, the photo, Maria Popova’s amazing The Marginalian, and Maria Mitchell’s accomplishments and quotes, which I knew a few of.
I wonder if you would let me add your poem with your acknowledgement to my binder of amazing poems that I want to study to help make me a better writer. I am also going to renew myself to your blog because I don’t know what happened.
Gail, what an amazing and kind comment. I don’t have control over how the blog is emailed out, so I hope your renewal works. You certainly can use my poem as a mentor text. That is how I learn, too. There were a few mentors for this poem. I’m sorry to hear you have an ongoing illness. There is such challenge in living with illness. Poetry can be a balm. Keep writing.
Thank you.