Category: art

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)

Spinning

Circling,
dancing,
caught between
idealism of expectation
and harshness of reality –
one has lofty goals,
the other invites limitation

I’ve excuses aplenty –
none that assuage ambition
Incomplete work dangles
from spider web threads
waiting for rescue

Talking to myself
unavailing – best
step out of this dichotomy
stop the whirling

(Sketch my own)

Too Old?

She is young,
this artist-self
celebrating discovery

He chastises enthusiasm,
this intellect-self, favours
logic over emotions

I use disability as an excuse
Accept intellect’s restraints
Ignore encouragement
Refrain from submitting
Halter progress

Youth has ambition
her paint spattered hands
grasp at opportunity –
her tender heart
emits a joyful tune..

…but age,
having abandoned ambition,
is hard of hearing.

(Art mine)

Colourless Expressions

Consciousness commands
a shift of focus –
tired of the clash of colours
stimulation overload –
my muse is leaning towards
the nuance of black and white

A study of shadows
and shading
and how light
arouses the soul

Speak to me in subtleties
she whispers
in tones suggestive
of hidden depths;
I am listening

And so I submerge myself
clear the palette of vibrant hues
and take up the lowly pencil
seek the promise
in colourless world.

(Colourless Expressions first appeared here August, 2020. Art mine)

Do Not Tell

No one told me,
in my haste to grow up,
that adulthood, awash
with responsibility,
would also be lonely

And, no one told me
that the days and nights
of sweating over lessons
would likely not lead
to the life imagined

nor that commitment –
the kind portrayed in movies –
does not exist – the word itself
bearing more substance
than the act, fickle as it is

No one told me that
motherhood would change
my reality permanently,
colouring it with unfathomable
pain and joy – such juxtaposition

And, no one told me that
every battle I ever arm myself for,
regardless of its justification,
is really a struggle with self –
inner demons the most menacing.

I never imagined that age,
with seismic force,
would alter my perspective so –
leave me barren and yet enriched,
enthralled with the ordinary
and unfazed by the rest

And, in the end, as I watch
the vernal rains announce renewal,
in the quiet of my solitude, I am
amazed and grateful for all
that this crazy, driven life has become
and that no one ever told me.

(This is an edited version of a poem published in April, 2019. Art my own.)

Shifting to Acceptance

In illness, I am passenger –
no matter how venturous
mind’s reach, the raw truth
is that limitations confine

This is not a sentence
for some perceived crime,
but a re-framing – attitude
shifting to acceptance

Choice becomes thoughtful –
time allows for that now –
and gratitude takes hold
in every corner of “I can”.

(Art my own)