Category: spirituality

Changing Direction

This path I walk is not my own;
it’s paved with genetic markers,
familial dysfunction, and ancestral angst.
Can you see them walking with me?
Those whose lives were cut too short –
the addicts, the tortured, the diseased –
none of us free – ensconced in blame.

If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.

I stand at the intersection
of broken dreams and hope for tomorrow
and in my altered state of awareness
see the commonality of our striving,
understand the patterns that divide,
and grasp the illusion of injustice
that denigrates our interconnectedness.

If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.

I stop and wait for an opening
to share this revelation
of underlying harmonious intent,
but the whir of societal traffic
complicates communication,
and I can find no voice to cut
through the din of the dead.

If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.

I turn the corner on my old life,
detach with loving sorrow
from a road that never served me,
a direction wrought only with pain.
Tiny arms await me on this open road,
eyes wide with wonder and possibility.
There is joy to be found along the way.

If you walk with me,
I’ll share this new adventure
and together, we’ll have much to gain.

(Changing Directions was originally published June, 2015)

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.

 

Moon Message

I stand on the threshold of change
anxiety and depression howling at my side
the shadows of uncertainty elongated
by the fullness of the moon.

She is no guide, this orb-faced
deity, whose countenance
fails to reveal a directive –
and yet, at some primal level

I feel we are aligned,
know that her pull is primal
her presence a reminder
that life is cyclical and

just as the emotional waters
rise, so too will they ease
and her voiceless essence
calls me to still the madness

close my eyes to the distortion of fear
and attune to a calm inner glow –
to trust the light within, and
move noiselessly into the unknown.

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(Today’s prompt is to select a tarot card and write about it.)

Talk To Me Of Horses

Talk to me of horses,
the young man says,
thin locks of blonde matted
on a sweaty brow, flashes of blue
that fade as eyes succumb
to weariness, the constant
whoosh, whoosh of respirator.

Talk to me of horses;
the world is losing its grip
and I have no cares for
the weather or car mechanics,
but I dream of horses
and I am feeling so emotional,
help me understand.

So I come to his bedside,
wait for moments of lucidity
ponder the implications
of his questions, wrestle with
my own inadequacies –
I am merely student here.

And we discuss horses –
the power of their bodies,
their beauty and grace,
their relationship to people –
decide they are ferrymen
transporting souls across worlds –
an explanation that satisfies, then

I am seeing things, he strains
embarrassed even in these final hours
to describe what seems inconceivable –
between sleep and awake – figures grey
and frightening that hover
over my bed like body snatchers…

A chills runs over me, as if icy
fingers have caressed my skin,
and I shudder despite myself,
scramble to maintain calm,
wonder aloud if it is not just fear
projecting grey into light –
clouding his vision.

My timing is off the next day,
arrive too late to see him pass,
find his mother waiting to receive me,
with a message from her son, my kin,
says that it makes no sense to her,
but he assured her I’d understand.

“You were right about the visions,”
he’d said; “there was nothing to fear.”

I smile through my sorrow –
ever the teacher that one,
now dead at twenty-one –

“Oh, and one more thing – could you
talk to me of horses.”

(Today’s prompt for NaPoWriMo is to write about the mysterious and magical.  This poem is dedicated to my cousin Tyler, whose aspirations were to be a physicist, but for whom life had another fate.  He taught me so much.)

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A Flower Knows

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt challenges us to move beyond our comfort zone.  It involves selecting a photograph, and then finding a poem in a language we do not speak, and writing a ‘translation’ assuming the poem is about the photograph we chose.

The photograph is from my own collection.  The poem is from a Norwegian poet, Gro Dahle (selected randomly).  Here is the original:

Det er ikke alltid
like lett å være pave
sier paven
Han gjemmer seg under bordet
og roper hunden til seg
Der sitter han til det er mørkt
og alle har sluttet å lete
NÃ¥r alt er stille
i Vatikanet
kryper han fram
fra under duken
og gir hunden
rent vann i skålen
SÃ¥ spiser han bokstavskjeks
ved vinduet

 ***

Here is my ‘translation’, which is in essence is only a mirroring of the structure, as I do not speak Norwegian:

There is life here
even as a flower wilts
while wilting
has surrendered self to rebirth
is not burdened by self
there is no room for ego here
nor does merit hold space
death is stillness
finality
has no expectation
is mere passage
a silent pause
before the next breath
that violent push to blossom
live again.  
 

(Aside:  I went back after writing this to see the actual translation of the original, which of course, has nothing to do with my imaginary concoction.  I discovered a delightful poem, that intrigued me to read more.  To see the original and its translation visit:  http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/22704/auto/0/It-isnt-always)

Thank you to Maureen Thorson for hosting and providing such interesting prompts.

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