Something Precious

Uncovering what matters; an exercise in distilling random rambling down to vital essence

This wobbly video poem is dedicated to someone who is very precious to me.

For our second writing workshop my friend and Peace Sanctuary neighbor, Amanda Reta created a sweet, sacred space around the community table and guided us through a couple wonderful exercises. One of which was to write a description of a person, place, or thing that is precious to us. After we free-wrote for a few minutes, the genius of the assignment kicked in as she outlined how we were going to edit it:

1. Pick just 3 nouns and cross out all the rest.

2. Keep all adjectives and verbs and cross out everything else.

3. Read what’s left to the group and see if they can guess who or what you described

As I followed Amanda’s instructions my somewhat random and rambling full page description of my daughter turned into a beautiful haiku-like poem that actually transmits her essence far better than my original description, despite the fact that the piece isn’t logical.

Sometimes art makes more sense than anything.

---

Riya Rose

by Kai Madrone

Bright light being
meets eager, enthusiastic.
Body quivers whole-hearted
confident human skin
watch clear, articulate grasp
float light spark.

—March 22, 2022

I believe poetry is a song that is meant to be heard as well as read. For the full experience you can listen here~