Collaborative Poem by Common Bread

 On Art Night, May 20, Common Bread celebrated the arts, and the Video Design Exhibit of our student leader, Crystal Marble. We created a group mandala, pictured above. Then Crystal led us in writing a collaborative poem, asking each person to contribute a line or verse beginning with, 'I am grateful,' and including an experience of the senses.

I am grateful for the breath all beings in the world breath.

Trees blowing, flowers bursting with scent, cool breeze on my skin.

Living all life.

I am grateful for the chance to grow.

Wind in the trees,

As above so below.

I'm grateful my cells are buzzing and dividing, aware of their refining.

Guided I grow.

I am grateful for all the loving people who put up with my freaky self.

I am grateful for the wintered leafless limbs of March

expanding like neurons saying holy, holy, holy,

I am grateful for the eternally changing lunar cycle.

I am grateful for the blueness of sky when the rain has passed,

when the concrete sweats its warmth into the fresh air,

and leaves drip and soil opens to the water like an infants mouth.

I am grateful for the change of seasons,

the smell of squishy things in warm soft rain.

I am grateful for petaled son,

for the pink rose that lived so sweetly

right before my smell died.

I am grateful, tipsy wild nocturnal beauty,

tasting of star sugar,

blessing the black ocean of midnight's motionless love.

I am grateful for the smell of rain after a long stretch of sun.

I am grateful when I smell the spring rain on the warm earth.

I am grateful for the feel of wind on my skin.

I am grateful for the song of the blackbird.

I am grateful for the smell of pine in the morning sunrise.