Category: life

Complexity of Freedom

Freedom is four hundred and fifty square feet of moveable tin, wheeling down the highway, destination unknown.  It is long walks through exotic forests, where focus lasts only as long as it takes to capture an image.  It is the privilege of sleeping and waking according to whim, routine an estranged concept.  It is the breeding ground for creativity – passion unleashed – and it is tainted by the hue of loneliness, the stark awareness that ties are strained, and those left behind feel abandoned.

Freedom’s highway calls –
hearts follow, passions flow, flee
guilt’s far-reaching pull.

(Written for DVerse’s Halibun Monday:  Complexity of Freedom prompt.)

A Child Responds

Console me
when life, upended
shuns and ridicules
let me know I’ll be alright

Step out
of picket-fence thinking,
find beauty in my uniqueness,
show me that love has no boundaries

Teach me
to treasure all that I am
even if that all is beyond
your comprehension

Grow with me
encourage exploration
demonstrate courage
in face of the unforeseeable.

(A Child Responds follows yesterday’s poem: A Mother Asks. Both poems were inspired by a post I wrote a few years back: No One Will Ever Love You)

 

A Mother Asks

How to receive a child
whose untimely arrival
serves only to punctuate
existing turmoil; whose
cries further entrap
a despondent mother…

How to love a child
who differs markedly
from gifted sons
from idyllic daughters
bears only resemblance
to the crime’s perpetrator

a child who lacks
the finesse so carefully
imbued in siblings –
fiery eyes and attitude,
preferring solitude of nature
to niceties of family life

How to guide this child,
this symbol of a past best left
behind, this burgeoning woman
defying all expectations –
this enigmatic burden?

(Follow up to this poem is:  A Child Responds)

 

Hopeful

 

Curious by nature,
and drawn by hope
we push forward

spring ourselves
from the mud-mired
traps of psychological
undoings

focus on a horizon
where sunrises
and sunsets
offer glimpses of glory

optimist and pessimist
alike, daring to believe
that the beckoning future
bears equal promise.

(This poem started with a few lines scribbled in the middle of the night.  To see the writing process, visit me at One Woman’s Quest II.)

Mortality

Death came for me
in that year of awakening
before numbers doubled
and puberty banished
autonomy – it knocked.

Peace accompanied certainty
as I lay, motionless in the water’s
depths, surprised at the absence
of panic, of struggle, a resigned
surrender overtaking me.

Light beckoned and a harmonic
chorus, like the whisper of angels
intoned  : Be strong,and
Know you are not alone,
before l lost consciousness,

And when I came to, sopping wet,
dry land beneath me, the softness
of death’s light, and the voice
of Heaven’s choir remained
etched in my soul’s memory.

 

A Falling Out

Drunken bodies –
silhouettes of adults –
ignore posted warnings
and locked gates –
clumsily scale fences
and plunge into dark,
their hoots echoing
between uniformly
lined-up balconies –
pristine rows of duplicate
houses, trimmed beds
and cement curbs
punctuating order.

I watch, horrified,
feel the bile rise,
have signed responsibility,
will bear the brunt
of any damage –
am burdened with worry
unwilling and unable
to take such a risk;
walk away and await
the fallout…

A vainless fret –
two old women
testing the rules,
stretching the limits
of structured guidelines
more ridiculed than
prosecuted, but the rift
has been solidified

used, I feel, and
disrespected, enraged –
not yet able to examine
the tension settings
of self-imposed restraints,
carefully guarded decorum
choking out compassion –
sensibility rattled.

(The story behind the poem is posted at One Woman’s Quest II)

Adjust the Focus

What purpose is served
in going back – and yet,
I find myself revisiting,
expecting what?

Revelation…
apology…
renewal…

I am no more than a guest
in history’s halls
powerless to undo
the drama, only
risk further complications.

Past equates with inequity,
no point turning on
the faucet of resentment
unleashing floods of anger.

Best to focus on tomorrow
forgive the past and self
and open to the new.