Yesterday, I walked downtown and bought some books at Aunties Bookstore. It offers a combination of new and used. I wandered and found an eclectic riprap of books. There were poetry, philosophy, and spirituality books mixed in.
Gary Snyder wrote a poem using that word: riprap. I felt a little that way as I wrote today as I tried to fit new words in among the old words. The old words are somewhat concrete and the new ones found it challenging to fit into the spaces. Actually, some of the new words were old and were previously used by others who went before. Even those words were not always easily fitted into the seams I tried squeezing them into. But, I tried not to force too hard out of concern I might break the space wide open and let something else come flooding in.
We probably live that way at times. We fit the new among the old. It causes some perplexity this complexity.
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidarity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
A good reminder. . . .
Thank you.
We see and depend on the stones set along the shore to hold back the wilder onslaughts of nature’s rage, You have shown that likewise, saved from harm, we rely on book and page.
Thank you for a wonderful comment Don.
RipRap, I like the word, and I especially love your poem! You always come through with something so delightful, that it makes me smile all over. Awesome poem my brother and it says it all in it message…Thanks for the blessing!
You are welcome Wendell. It is a word that reaches out, taps you, and pulls you in. Take care.