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.

Mourning

A murder of crows
peck at a carcass
beneath the old Spruce
Likely dragged there
by a coyote after feasting

They do that sometimes
a brazen act of rebellion
our bricked presence
blocking the path

I reached for the phone
this morning, wanting to relay
current events, and then…stopped
remembering you are gone
only my carcass remains, rots
at the mocking of crows

Coyotes are tricksters, they say
and I feel picked apart
preyed upon on my own path
the wounds of the past
inviting the mind’s vultures.

What is it all about
this mortality/ immortality?

A dove rests on the porch rail
sleeping despite the crow fray

Peace slumbers on this mournful day.

(Image my own)

Stories

Trees have a story,
buried in their roots,
refined by seasonal passages,
etched in scarred bark

Birds know these stories
Sing their praise, unapologetic –
and we can hear them too,
if we only learn to listen

I have a story
birthed from parental lips
delineated by the jostling
of our many limbed life

It states that I am the good one,
the responsible, the brilliant,
the child of hope and valour…
this story is not mine

I am a tree, whose scars
suggest a history, whose roots
remain hidden, and whose voice
was lost in familial tempests

The birds know it, though
and carry my essence
on winged notes, back
to source, where I am written.

(Art my own)

The Answer

3:33 AM
Startled awake
The answer
there, on the brink

Of course I lose it
rising to answer another call
Oh, how it taunts

Try to recapture the moment
find the right twist of body
as if I’m a radio tuner
signal lost

And what answer would that be, anyway?
Now fully awake, pondering questions –
only one applies

This newly formed fear
I’ve dared not voice it –
it cuts deep

Is there an answer
and if so, do I want to hear it?

I fall back to sleep
awake hours later
mind blissfully empty.

(Image my own)

We Are Not Islands

We are not islands:
isolated,
insulated,
to be ignored.

We are hearts engaged
in a relational dance:
intertwining stories,
weaving new tales

Yearning for love’s reciprocity
Delighting in wonder of discovery
Slugging through painful demise
Striving to be better

We build walls,
construct towers,
follow paths leading nowhere –
the pitfalls of our quest

Artificial barriers:
lofty ideals,
dead ends…
and still we push on

Dreaming of hands that hold
and gentle waters – soothing
and warm – passionate kisses:
Love’s rewards

We exist
not for accumulation
but for the gifts that arise
when open hearts dance

(Image my own)