Author: VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

Oh, Fences

There, beyond the fence lines
amid the birch and firs
I find my breath

Does graze, and fawns skip
as if they are children
chasing butterflies

An abundance of harmony,
ego leads me to believe,
but it is only denial

The bulldozer snorts
and rumbles into view,
deer and I lifting heads

Tails raised, the four-legged scatter,
hide themselves within the brush –
Is such shelter adequate? I wonder

Human demand eroding the green –
We talk about living minimally –
fail to consider God’s creatures

Whose very existence shrinks
within the confines
of expanding fences.

(Image my own)

Teach Me

Teach me reverence;
I am losing ground

Children adulting,
mothering in a void

Teach me acceptance
disability’s waters flood

I am in the margins,
an afterthought…

I concede life changes
release control…

Passion begs an outlet;
I am worn…

And I am open…
Teach me.

(Teach Me first appeared here January 2020. Edited for this edition. Art my own)

M.E. (Anacrostic)

Memories escape me…
You’d think I’m older than I am…
Autonomic nervous system misfiring…
Lucky I have a sense of humour –
Grief would otherwise be smothering –
I remain optimistic
Counsel myself to find the lesson

Every day is a question mark
Needs ever changing
Can I walk without aids?
Endure a drive in the car?
Past my time without overexerting?
Healing requires restorative sleep
Although, it’s been years since I woke up refreshed –
Letting go of such expectations part of the learning –
Occasionally energy comes in bursts,
Mostly, it’s a trick…
Yesterday’s self no longer exists
Energy a quagmire…
Longing does not equal capability
Initiative encounters brick walls
Too often I overdo it
Insensitive to my own reality
Stubbornly unwilling to learn.

(Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is the disease I’ve lived with for 10 years now. I’ve collected a few more to keep it company along the way, and, of course, had one or two issues to start with. Anyway, I was recently inspired to write an acrostic poem. I’m sure there is more left to learn about living with these challenges. Image my own, as usual.)

We Are Mermaids

Severity of disease
defines degree of marginalization

Who will enter the darkness;
rub shoulders with despair?

Disability is entrancing
but doesn’t invite engagement

We are mythical creatures,
those of us whom fate has chosen

Passage aborted, movement
encumbered, we fantasize

about normalcy –
to be forgiven, just a day

That we might shatter
our barricades, and bound

carefree into the ocean waves –
like the mermaids that we are.

(Image my own, aided by AI)

Burrs

How many winter walks
ended with burrs matted
in curly Wheaton hair?

How you wriggled
to escape the grooming;
how we laughed at
jokester antics?

Your spirit still fills
the empty spaces

I hear the jingle
of your collar, catch
a whiff of terrier fluff

Pull on an invisible leash
whenever I encounter burrs.

(For our former, cherished companion, whose memory still lingers. Image mine)