 Good morning. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society and to our annual poetry service which celebrates the place of poetry in our lives with the world words of poets unknown to us and poets from right here in our community. My name is Ros Woodward and today I'm joined by Reverend Kelly Crocker, Linda Warren and Daniel Karnes and we're joined by many FUS poets Bobby Zaynor, Ardis Kaufman, Ken Richardson, Robin Chapman, Shirley Chosey, Max Woodward and Jeff Glover. Many thanks to all of them for helping create today's service. At First Unitarian Society we question boldly, listen humbly, grow spiritually, act courageously and love unapologetically. If you're visiting us today welcome. We're so glad you're with us. If you'd like more information about the First Unitarian Society please stop by the welcome table which is located just to the left of the doors as you go out in the Commons. We hope you'll be able to stay and join us for coffee immediately after the service which is also held in the Commons. For those of you joining virtually welcome to you as well. We're so very glad that you're joining us. We hope you'll take a moment to watch the announcement slides shown immediately after today's service to learn more about the upcoming programs and activities. One special announcement, next week we'll be gathering at Vilas Park with the other two Madison UU congregations, James Reeb and Prairie at 11am. There will be no 10am worship service here so please don't come here and join us in Vilas Park at 11. As we settle into the silence may we hold these words titled interlude by Jeff Glover. One morning walking in a wood it seemed as if I understood in a lucid interlude a moment of deep solitude how vast is nature and and how real in simple grandeur and appeal and silence like an endless song offered me before the dawn a timelessness that I could prize appreciate and realize that life and living ever rare a blessed yes beyond compare exceptional and truly good a ground of being where I stood. It could be a smile or a poem or new daylight that finds you through an open window or perhaps remembering that tomorrow was never promised. It could be the scent of baking bread the first chill of autumn that has you reaching for your favorite wool sweater or maybe it's the noticing of how easily red maple becomes and let's go. It could be taking today off to be still to unknown to notice to practice loosening your troubled grip because grace can never be gripped or grabbed it could be choosing softness in a world grown hard because you're tired of hurting and being hurt and mercy is the best kind of medicine. It could be an invitation to gather around the listening table where every color is beautiful where there is no blame no shame no them no other it could be any of these things or no thing at all that remind you that really only a few things matter food trees words love mostly love and we invite you now to rise and body or in spirit and join us in our words of affirmation as we light our chalice the distance between us is holy ground to be traversed feet bare hands raised in joyous dance so that once it is crossed the tracks of our pilgrimage shine in the darkness and light our coming together in a bright and steady light and now join us in singing our opening hymn 346 come sing a song with me please be seated and I invite anyone who would like to come forward for our time to come on up we are gonna come on up guys we're gonna be writing a poem together up here but first to start it all off we are going to hear the poem of max woodward who's 12 and who is here in the room but no one look at him it's going to be read by his very own dad justin woodward yeah one of the great joys of parenthood is you get you have to look at yourself through your own child's eyes so here we go uh for context a yurt is a circular house made of wood usually you can deconstruct it in things it's portable ish made out of this one is made out of sticks this is called my father's yurt by max woodward I am sitting at my window in the bright and sunny cabin that has been in our family for a generation hand built overlooking the valley as the sun shines brightly behind me I take a sip from my tea as I look out my window I see the sparkling summer morning bursting with color as I look at the pinks and yellows and purples of the prairie flowers I hear a bang bang it came from my dad he was working on his yurt again are you okay I ask as I try not to laugh at him struggling to lift a log that didn't need to be lifted maybe he replies well let me know if you need anything I say in a quizzical tone oh I will he says a little too eagerly I shouldn't have said that I say nope uh oh I say while he's trying to find reads near a stream for his roof of course can I help my audiobook ended and I'm bored because I don't know the password to your phone to get another one up and running yes you can by grabbing any sticks you find all right I will totally do that or not could I like carve something for your yurt's entrance or something in that genre not quite yet but maybe when I actually have a yurt's entrance oh I see well can I give you your phone so you can log me in get another audiobook sure or okay I'll go grab that you just did oh wait oh there's more okay page two see we get to look at ourselves anyway uh wait I have a proposition for you okay want to help me with my yurt yes that's why I came out here right so why don't you go grab some sticks just not the big ones like I said before okay I guess I can go do that as I pick up all the sticks and stones I see my dad continues to build his yurt yeah thank you Justin and thank you max I wish you all could see his face right now I'm max so what we asked folks to do was send us poems on the theme of summer summers not summers your brother summer uh play whimsie wonder joy and so what we'd like to do right now is write a poem together so think of a line throw out a line throw out a word rosa's gonna write them down and together we're gonna pull together our very own poem so what do you think of when you think of summer oh all right you got that and yet now another summer's day that's a good start oh what's that max 100 degrees another summer's day 100 degrees okay what comes next charlie you got something whoa so can we say warmer than 50 degrees yeah 50 percent of 100 degrees got it another line karen uh dan yelled ice cream karen swimming how about you guys yes swimming swimming oh and dan said ice cream how about you guys what do you think of summer what do you like to do in the summer build swimming ice cream build a yurt yeah if you what charlie if you if you build a yurt you get hurt that's a good rhyme i like it i like it not wrong not wrong says the mom of that family that is very true yeah do you have something about summer camp yeah summers biking so camp and biking camp biking rollerblading you stay warm in the yurt is that what you said you stay warm cherry tomatoes and riding horses john watermelon seeds all right summers playing soccer cherry tomatoes riding horses what is this watermelon seeds hannah beautiful flowers riding horses watermelon seeds beautiful flowers tony man i think we need to save save that is our very ending mandatory fun indy may you forgot nancy reading on a breezy screened porch i got campfire songs on that one reading on a breezy screened porch indy may gardens gardens all right one more summers camp going camping with friends and then we will end it with mandatory fun and let's see we're going to read the whole thing and see how we did here going camping with friends okay and yet another summer's day 100 degrees 50 of 100 swimming ice cream build a yurt if you build a yurt you get hurt camp biking rollerblading cherry tomatoes riding horses watermelon seeds reading on a breezy screened porch gardens going camping with friends mandatory fun yay give yourselves a hand that's a beautiful poem all right thank you all for writing our poem together and now we're going to sing you out to go have some fun i invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens the work of our community you'll see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website fus madison.org and you'll also see our text to give information there as well baskets are now being passed for those of us here in the room we thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together today we take a moment once again to think about the power of poetry the role it plays in our lives how it can express things in a deeper way than our normal prose or conversational ways this year we asked for poems that spoke of summer and once again our f us poets came through we know that poetry is not something that resonates for us all some of us returned away from poetry in high school when we were asked to hold a poem up to the light dissect it and use all of our might to squeeze a deeper meaning that didn't lie upon the surface some of us have tried to read poets and their words confused or befuddled us and we turned away from the world of poetry i was never a lover of poetry my closest friends in college were all english majors who spent their evenings lounging around in one another's rooms reading poems out loud and made my head hurt then they invited me to the jaredleen our dodge poetry festival and everything changed honestly i begrudgingly attended thinking it would just be lovely to have a day outside a trip away from school to a beautiful place i didn't expect to fall in love the day was spent with real actual published poets reading their works from tiny stages in intimate tense and suddenly it all made sense and i became a believer in the power of poetry now i find myself turning to a poem in the quiet moments for the simple solace that it can bring sometimes i'm looking for one that makes me smile makes me stop for a moment and pause like this one from denucia lemaris called feeding the worms ever since i found out that earth worms have taste buds all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies i pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin imagine the dark writhing ecstasy the sweetness of apples permeating their pores i offer beets and parsley avocado and melon the feathery tops of carrots i'd always thought there's a menial life eyeless and hidden almost vulgar though now it seems they bear a pleasure so sublime so decadent i want to enhance it however i can forgetting a moment my place on the menu right there's that little surprise at the end that you didn't see coming that's the part i adore and for for just that moment we all did it right you pause and you think about that larger truth and you giggle because we're all on the menu it's said in this different way that just makes you appreciate it a wee bit more now some poems will tell you a story maybe one that you can see in your minds that take us to a place in time that remind us of the joy of being human of being alive how alike and connected we are a good poem can offer a memory insights empathy communion with the experience of another this is potatoes by lucy adkins he was traveling from chicago to jollyette he said on the expressway old state highway 59 when a semi rollover caused a load of potatoes to scatter across the road people stopped pulled their pickups and jeeps their chevy vans and vw bugs off to the shoulder got out and dashed across three lanes of traffic after idaho russets and uconn goals reds and whites and yams i'd have understood if it were a brink's trucks with flyaway 20s and hundreds but potatoes perhaps it was the fact of sudden bounty dropping down in front of you and like unexpected grace you must be grateful whatever it is that is given poetry is a way to engage our imagination to explore worlds we may never see with our eyes never travel to in our bodies but we can travel there in our minds we can have conversations with creatures that we have never known ken richardson one of our poets today wrote a poem have you ever met a dinosaur this is ken's note on his poem marine biologists thought that this fish 400 million years old became extinct when the dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago however one was discovered in 1938 off the coast of southeast africa in the mozam beak channel decades later a large colony was found at 600 feet deep i wanted to write a poem about the sila cans but had writer's block until i thought about interviewing one after asking a fish this question have you ever met a dinosaur the poem wrote itself in about five minutes with the right artist this could be a children's book with the working title how i wrote a poem you can too this is ken's poem of course i've met a dinosaur eons ago we shared earth's scene but they don't live here anymore in water in sky or in between they've passed from view these ancient greats to be compressed in fossil states yet i'll keep both eyes peeled just in case they return and are revealed to the human race highly improbable this i grant but possible winks the sila can't and with a swish this fish appears from the depths of 400 million years thank you ken our hope today is that you may be inspired by the words of your fellow members to explore poetry to sit with poetry to allow poems to be some of your companions your teachers your loves perhaps you will be inspired to write some of your own in a world of speed and efficiency poetry demands a certain consideration a slowing down and ask for connection it offers belonging and so we invite you to step into the presence of these poets open yourselves to their words their experiences their losses their deep abiding wonder and joy the invitation of poetry according to life to this moment this moment is real and this moment is what we have so may we bring our whole lives our whole beings to this moment together ocean song i saw a seashell on the sand picked it up and found it grand with colors pale and pink and tan and held it to my ear by hand imagine can you imagine can you what i heard nature's song without a word amazed i held it close and long as it sang the ocean's song on it went it did not end i held it to my ear again infinite it played until forever and it always will by this i fathomed things profound what fragile shells can tell with the sound when summer came when summer came to my surprise one day it brought out butterflies dozens of them fill the air fluttering near everywhere how i wondered could this be they'd all appear so suddenly in my garden by the lake what of this was i to make magic maybe born of bliss more than metamorphosis so it seemed this special day when nature's beauty on display way above mere expectation a wonder for my exaltation and this is summer 2023 by Shirley Chosie parched earth cracks withered leaves clogged gutters green morphs to brown crunch underfoot rain abstains without it we die where is thunder precursor to precursor to moisture hampered vegetation collapses we are renewed from above and live this is grandfather smith from robin Chapman i'll show you he said to my brother and me who were little and full of fidgets and fight from the long car ride to arkansas will find one we trotted off after him unbelieving that any whistle could be found in the woods but keeping close behind as a path opened up and brambles and bushes to the cool of the trees and he kept leading the way touching now this branch and that as if there might be a whistle hidden under the leaves until at last he stopped pulled out a jackknife cut off a branch big around as his thumb the wood pithy elderberry perhaps with supple green bark he sat on his heels to show us how to make four cuts peel the strips back then over and under and over braid a carrying loop then sharpened a little stick to poke out the corky pith cut a sounding hole narrowed the whistle's mouth the voices of the whistles he made for us melodic low each a different note and this also by robin Chapman june bug copper and emerald sheen of its beetle back six black jointed legs caught in the cupped hand to fix and not a black cotton thread to one back leg it buzzed through the june air iridescent around my head small dirigible or green kite held high in my fist tethered to my run across the field how that green carapace opened in flight to reveal dark wings moving too fast to see its bare legs barbed its eyes shiny its buzz the sound of summer's heat our next poem comes from bobby zaner the best of birthdays birthdays no longer hold the same meaning as when i was a rambunctious child eager to tear into gifts from loved ones nor when i was old enough to get a driver's license or kiss a boy while on the luther league hayride or secretly hope for cash on my special day birthdays no longer hold the same meaning as when i cast my first political ballot for whom i cannot quite recall nor when i drank too much wine in celebration or when my mother forgot so i called her with thanks for having given birth to me birthdays no longer hold the same meaning as when i turned 35 and left chicago for a tiny home in madison wisconsin realized that cards are fun gifts not so much blinked to find myself suddenly a retirement age applying for medicare today a package arrived from trey on the cusp of becoming 12 inside precious poems with drawings about nature dreams joy as quintents free verse a sincane climbing stairs waiting to pounce upon my tender heart a bounty to fill this birthday with new meaning showroom a midwesterner by birth i called los vegas home for 30 years transported to the desert by others choices anchored there by job friends habit i saw myself nevadon until the prairie summoned me standing on my summer sidewalk a neighbor asks don't you miss the los vegas shows the excitement the glamour above me a gray squirrel high wires along the telephone line a cardinal flashes red orange red among the oaks not really a reply thanks artist oh and these next two from ken richardson the first summer job the brown wooden trailhead kiosk needed paint after years of exposure to rain snow ice heat some vandalism too leaning from ladder i scraped sanded painted breathing stench of something decomposing nearby i did not search for it after inhaling foul odor for nearly one hour i could feel airborne organisms lodging in lungs i fled kiosk before finishing washed clothes shampooed scrubbed skin finally smell dissipated in hummus chips and chardonnay there's always next summer and this haiku for hikers wild parsnip on trail deer tick and wood tick await venture forth with care this is brother by robin Chapman linolium squares offered game after game rolled out on the floor of our playroom for my brother and me at four and six memory says there were squares for nursery rhyme recent recitations by our bears and clowns elephants and lambs room to enact the plots of chase and rescue jungle flying kingdom kingdom rule stories gave way as we moved to dolls and trains whose tracks snake down the hall tinker toys whose sticks and spoked wheels still figure as molecules to me now building sets whose ropes and pulleys presage those that haul a fleet of canoes and kayaks to my roof even now at almost 70 i can recall the shiny promise of any square foot of floor can become a world if you have a brother to help invent the rules many thanks to all of our poets we gather each week with the losses and celebrations of recent days in our hearts these we share here with one another in a spirit of acceptance and support we light a candle for tom macomb son of craig macomb and lila pine craig is a past board president of f us and lila served for many years on our social justice teams tom attended religious education here during his youth he passed away recently at the age of 51 there will be a memorial for tom on saturday august 19th at 2 p.m at the james rebuyu congregation and we send our love and strength to craig lila and their families we light a candle for the life and memory of eva right who passed away one year ago on august 4th we send our love to bob buzeki and their children their families and all who are missing eva today and we light a candle of strength and healing for genevieve edwards miller who had surgery yesterday afternoon we're sending our love to gen her husband don her children and grandchildren as they journey these days together and with sorrow and heavy hearts we light a candle once again for the violence in our nation and in our world particularly this week we are holding the family and friends of oh shei sibley who was a victim of violence and hatred this week we send our love to them to all who are in mourning around this globe to all who experience violence and all who live in fear and today always we light a candle for peace on august 6th 1945 the united states became the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it dropped an atomic bomb on herosima may common humanity guide us as we face the nuclear challenge and if you'll join me in a moment of poetic meditation with these words from rosemary whatola trauma blaze pascal said in difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart and so today i walk the streets with vermilion maple leaves inside me and the deep purple of late blooming lark spur and the lilting praise of meadow lark i carry with me thin creeks with clear water and the three quarters moon and the spice warm scent of nasturtiums and honey in the sunlight and words from neruda and slow melodies by eric satie it is easy sometimes to believe that everything is wrong that people are cruel and the world destroyed and the end of it all imminent but there is yet goodness beyond imagining the creamy white flesh of ripe pears and the velvety purr of a cat in my lap and the white smear of milky way i carry these things in my heart more certain than ever that one way to counteract evil is to ceaselessly honor what is good and share it share it until we break the chokehold of fear and at least for a few linked moments we believe completely in beauty growing beauty yes beauty and now i invite you to rise in all the ways we do to join in our closing hymn number 301 touch the earth reach the sky and one final poem from dana falls there is no controlling life try corralling a lightning bolt containing a tornado dam a stream and it will create a new channel resist and the tide will sweep you off your feet allow and grace will carry you to higher ground the only safety lies in letting it all in the wild with the weak fear fantasies failures and success when loss rips off the doors of the heart or sadness veils your vision with despair practice becomes simply bearing the truth in the choice to let go of your known way of being the whole world is revealed to your new eyes blessed be go in peace and please be seated for the postlude