Get Your Shoes On

Digging Into Mindfulness

A micropoem for World Environment Day 2023

Gumboots ready in my garden

My garden ready for gumboots

© Carolyn Hastings 2023

This would have to be the shortest poem I’ve ever written!

I was inspired by a poem that turned up in my inbox overnight — Anne Swannell’s Study in Mindfulness, via Rattle.com (see screenshot)

I read Anne’s poem and it instantly reminded me of William Carlos Williams’ famous poem, The Red Wheelbarrow, which curiously enough I’d indirectly made reference to in a comment to William J Spirdione prior to reading Anne’s mindfulness poem.

Also of some coincidental curiosity, I’d been working in my garden yesterday afternoon and it had crossed my mind that my muddy gumboots could come in handy for my response to Indubala Kachhawa’s June prompt for Paper Poetry: Get Your Shoes On.

In recognition of June 6 being World Environment Day, Indubala has asked us to get our poetry soles on (literally, she wants us to include footwear of some type in our responses!) and write about something we can do to help the environment.

gumboots ~ a red wheelbarrow ~ plums in a copper bowl ~ they all lined up like ducks in a row et voilà — mission accomplished! 😊

I even followed suit and reworked the title of Anne’s poem for my own poem — well, Oscar Wilde said ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ so if it’s okay with him, I’m diggin’ it! 😜

Besides, digging around in the dirt is a tonic for the garden and the mind.

I love ‘digging into mindfulness’. 😄

Get Your Shoes On

This is an open invitation to everyone to join Paper Poetry’s June prompt: Get Your Shoes On and World Environment Day. This year’s theme is #BeatPlasticPollution, but anything that helps the environment is worth doing — and that means it’s worth writing about, right? 💚

I’ve already tagged William J Spirdione into this story; I’m hoping I can entice Denise Darby | Imad | Thalia Dunn | Douglas Lim to consider participating. The prompt details are here —

Thank you so much for reading. 🙏 💕

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