Category: life

Grey Clouds Hover

Life! One day rushing to collect kids, stopping for the dry cleaning, and praying the slow cooker is indeed cooking; and the next strolling down uncluttered lanes, contemplating absence.  How did we get here?  How did we dream so big and land so humble?  Gone are big homes and hefty mortgages. Hell, we’re down to one car. Sunday dinners with the family are memories and nowadays, my head spins to think of cooking for more than we two.

Now we speculate about time left.  Ponder what distances will support us.  Shall we travel, avoid the winter months, and if so, will our health cooperate?  Will the children understand?   Forgive my melancholy.  The silence is echoing off the walls, and I am reflective today. Not in a good way.  I’d best get myself outside for some fresh air.

Time slips through fingers
palms reaching outward, hopeful –
Fall’s hues distract woe.

(Written for Twenty Four’s 50 Word Thursday, and dVerse‘s open link night. Photo supplied by Deb Whittam)

First Place in a Writing Contest

Thank you to the Story Circle Network for accepting my story:  Hoping to Be Missed.

I am excited to report that I won first place in the Reflections Personal Essay Contest 2018.

To read the story and find out more about the Story Circle Network, click here.

Eagle Encounters

Tales of bald eagles
entice exploration,
cameras ready –

Great Blue heron,
a woodpecker,
nuthatches and
chickadee – all
grace our lenses..

.. no eagles.

Then driving into town,
business and errands
distracting, a shape looms,
rises up from the asphalt

black tail feathers
bordered by white
to match its noble head.

We search again,
follow directions
down country roads
into the bush…

… no eagles.

Friends visit,
we tour, show off
our rural beauty,
espy white amongst
autumn’s foliage

two eagles hunting
along river’s flow –
one veers to fly
overhead, in salute,
or mocking…

…no cameras.

 

 

 

Dispensable

In my absence
dreams flourish,
friendships form,
enterprises thrive

In my absence
opponents clash,
decisions falter,
differences grow

All that was viable,
all that motivated,
all that defined…

Now vapours –
truths forgotten –
in my absence.

(Jilly is hosting is in the dVerse pub tonight where repetition is the challenge.  I am combining this with Fandago’s Word of the Day, opponent,  and Ragtag Community’s prompt, friend.)

Distance

Even in togetherness there is distance.

I am alone –
a central figure, distracted,
aiming for contact,
unable to eviscerate control,
repeatedly producing a singular confusion.

Define success…
Is it the one on top,
the know-it-all,
or are these the machinations
of estrangement?

I am unable to discern –
stability never more than a dalliance.

The pavement ahead whispers
promises of belonging –
can I tolerate the quest?

Unfulfilled, I am defensive,
fear off-shoots of depression,
shield tender inner places…

Bring on change;
others watch – look to me
as an example.

I can do this, on their behalf.

Never alone.

Always distances to cross.

(V.J.’s Weekly Challenge is distance. Also submitting this for Open Link Night at dVerse.)

VJWCbanner

Smoking Pit

Cigarette butts
no longer linger
concrete, but
I swear the cloud
of smoke lingers,
the sweat of adolescent
anxiety – the suffocating
pressure to comply –

Names escape,
but I remember
smugness and
rivalry, and
the spine-crawling fear
of confrontation,
and indisputable
in my mind
are the scars
of being so alone.

(Written for Twenty Four’s 50 word Thursday prompt.  Image supplied by Deb Whittam.)

Foundations

Rock solid,
biding time,
fixated on
a future
born of
movement.

Frozen –
iced snapshots
of possibility,
immobilized by
misperceptions

Role-playing
expectations
carved from
generations
of staging.

One falters
all tumble,
lives shatter,
sink, lies
bottom out

sediment
disintegrates,
settles –
strength emerges
resurrecting

rock by rock,
precarious at first,
then gradually
re-building,
balance restored.

(Submitted for Willow Poetry’s challenge:  What Do You See, based on featured image.)

It’s Not That I Don’t See…

Somewhere, searchers are combing through rubble
to find signs of life, or remains, while I fret over the
size of my belly, bloated by excess, filled by gluttony.

Somewhere, a mother pleas for the return of her child,
a daughter stolen, held by authority, while another cries
because her toddler’s coiffed appearance fails to win.

Somewhere, their village destroyed by war, families
flee to find peace, encounter rejection, and worse,
while a son murders his sister to honour family pride.

Somewhere, parents wait with terror-seized hearts
as a gun-wielding lunatic holds their children hostage,
while businessman fatten their wallets over arms sales.

Perspective tells me that I am unjustified to complain
over my first world problems, am selfish to bemoan
the trivialities of my self-centered existence, that I just

need to shift my viewpoint, look outside myself, and see
that inequalities and hardships beg for my compassion,
alter my focus and become a beacon for the world; and,

yet, I am overwhelmed by the tragedy that floods my
large screen TV, desensitized by the staged and unstaged
images of brutality, tired of the unsubstantiated claims

of terrorism, and the political garnering for votes; cannot
bear to hear of one more gun attack in a country where
the right to bear arms is confused with personal security;

feel out of control when I listen to stories of great loss,
am compelled to shut off the media, turn my attention to
self-criticism, and find a manageable issue close to home.

(Tonight is Open Link Night at dVerse.  I am also linking this up with One Woman’s Quest II weekly challenge: attention.  “It’s Not That I Don’t See” first appeared September 2016.)

Harboring

Memories are boats
anchored, idle,
awaiting calm –

quaint ideals
keep them docked,
undermine progress

never intended to harbour
so many secrets –
lack a personal compass

reliable enough
to navigate solo –
a necessary tactic

to release these boats
cluttering my
story’s shoreline.

(Written for dVerse, whose host Lillian challenges us to write a quadrille (44 words) around the theme: harbour.  Hats off to the daily prompts from Ragtag Community: quaint, Fandango: personal, and Daily Addictions: solo. Image from personal collection.)

Tapestry

Laid out, in a tapestry,
I suppose the overriding
message would be inconsistency –

a montage of seemingly unrelated
images, the blatant disconnection
offending to the eye, and yet…

closer inspection might reveal
a thread of commonality –
the presence of orange,
in its many incarnations,
woven into each tableau…

a hint of the woman whose
wanderlust has driven her
in so many directions

a passion, that like the sun
cannot contain its rays –
a willingness to embrace
the unknown, acceptant of
endings and beginnings.

I regard myself as inquisitor,
charged with assessing motivations
of crimes, turning over choices,
looking under rocks for disclosure
of weaknesses and fallacies,
questioning the what ifs and whys,
as if life could be rewritten –

the interrogator has no appreciation
for colour, does not allow credit
for tinges of orange, judges only
in terms of black and white…

lacks the empathy to behold wonder
in a life, that despite its incoherence,
depicts a tapestry of survival:

a testimony to the art
of a creative soul’s passage.

(Written originally as way of self-introduction for my writing circle, submitted here in response to Willow Poetry’s challenge:  What do you See?)

Photo courtesy of Willow Poetry.