Category: poetry

Labour

Extract the miracle
from the celebrated

Each story is lifeless
until told – its patterns

Stubborn, are innate –
We all crave renewal

I crave renewal
arms extended
fists unfolded

Believe in will –
the power to breathe life
into inert corners

Does not life support us?
Is not consciousness infinite?
and the divine patient?

Yesterday, I gave up
resigned myself to failure
(It’s a joke I play on myself)

This soul labours to find meaning
and I will breathe life into form
until quitting time finds me cleansed.

(Art my own)

Doctoring

Doctoring broken hearts –
my own legacy a training ground –
like an anesthesiologist

I keep the patient breathing,
asleep – muted by kindness,
unconscious and unable to react.

Why?

Because lulling others is more
effective than operating on self –
faux obligations such a balm

Administer lidocaine to the wounds
Numbness preferable to open-hearted
investigation…

no sutures strong enough
to remedy internal bleeding

(Art my own)

Facades

Somehow I knew his mask was porcelain –
impossible to hide the soul’s light
reflected in troubled eyes…

I played along though,
humoured his self-deception
nodded at assertions of calm

Knew that one day the facade would crack
the mask would slip and the rage escape

Why I didn’t run; I do not know
Maybe it was recognition –
my own countenance a carefully construed lie

Maybe I needed to prove to myself
that no matter how violent his storm
this time I would emerge triumphant.

(Poem inspired by Sadje’s What Do You See image prompt.)

Hiss

Wrapped in reptilian attire, change
climbs aboard my well-intentioned scheme
like a boa constrictor – disarming me

I am more inconvenienced than repulsed –
after all, snake is my power animal,
Or so the seer said…many years ago

Days when I would wear the scaly
comportment of power – invite
transformation- my essence a seeker

But I am trying to settle here –
embrace age and its complications
and yet the serpent persists

Sibilance insisting on co-navigation-
and what will be the outcome, I wonder
if I were to surrender to such a calling?

Change does not heed our fears,
our ego-driven agendas…
It bears its fangs and taunts

I exaggerate the threat, of course-
imagine being consumed or suffocated –
disregard the potential for healing

Have no time for reflection or pause –
the course is already set –
I hold on and feign control

(Art my own)

Distractions

How am I to work today
as a black squirrel navigates
precarious saplings
with death-defying sure-footedness?

And the Red-bellied woodpecker
thrums outside my window,
having mistaken brick for walnut bark
his bright red cap catching my breath

And how can I ever hope to focus
when a flit of yellow coming to rest
at our array of feeders, indicates
that the Goldfinch is declaring Spring?

The Chickadees are calling “you-who”
and the Blue Jay dares to ask
“Where are the peanuts?”
and I am feeling a tug of guilt

Even a starling,
perching on the windowsill
peers inside and ponders
what attraction keeps me glued

I’ve papers to write, blogs to read
and, well, a need to fulfill expectations
but how am I to concentrate
when Nature is so full of promise?

(Sketch my own)

Slanted Orange

Essence is essence
and flat as I might feel
shadow reveals otherwise;
such is the mystery of life

Orange is my essence –
the promise of sunshine
and creativity, and… I envy
blue its expansiveness

Constrained as I am
by conformity –
this silver-framed
existence a settling

But shadows don’t settle
they stretch and bend
and exclaim rebellion
savagely defending essence.

(Slanted Orange was written in 2022 as a collaborative effort with a local photographer. The efforts of our poetry group are published in a book called the Minimalist Eye. Click here to see the whole collection as well as the photographs that inspired each poem. I’ve used my own art for this post.)