Category: Uncategorized

Attack

Compromised,
scaling a steep
dangerous
cliff wall

desiring relief,
a sign to indicate
a turning point
an exit

nothing worldly
can calm anxiety
uncertainty
life on hold

kindness
warms, reassures,
cannot counter
looming reality

stifled, begging
willing to deal
response absent
pleas hollow

surrendering
to fear is not an option
strength called for
and courage

love and compassion
the only sword
of significance
battling disease.

(May 12th is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Awareness Day.  M.E. is a debilitating disease that attacks all systems in body leaving 25% of its victims permanently bed bound.  To date, due to lack of research, there is no effective treatment or cure, even though this disease effects over 1/2 million Canadians and many more worldwide.)

Dear Sylvia Plath (Response to Apprehensions)

Please let me preface with a confession –
I am not familiar with your work.
It is not oversight on my part, rather
a deliberate avoidance – you see,
I too have faced the brand of madness
that drove you to your death, have
feared that any intimacy we might share
would stir my own apprehensions.

Indeed, I understand all too well
the presence of walls,
have believed in the power of sky,
the promise of green, found faith in angels –
nature my solace – realized too young
that the sun’s brilliance, that my brilliance
cannot be sustained by the innocence of white –
bleeds at the fate of indifferent stars.

I understand how gray seeps in,
tears away at the illusions,
entraps us –
how the past stalks, spirals
threatens to suck us in, and how
having lost my own connection to birds and trees,
wonderment sours.

It is the fate of women
born into patriarchal times,
that the blood of our menses
should colour our fists –
our fury as potent as a paper bag –
how can we not feel terror
when we worship a God
whose religion disparages our gender?

I have faced the inevitability of black –
what once brought solace having lost
its definition, unidentifiable –
have faced mortality, the cold blank
stares of death still haunting –
I am the one who has passed you by –
afraid to linger too long in your words,
have woefully overlooked
the merit of a sympathetic read.

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(Today’s prompt is to write a response to a poem by Sylvia Plath.)

Impact

Eternity, says the mountain
when referencing time

Centuries, says the forest
whose trees grace its side

Decades, say the roadway
who winds and weaves by

Hours, say the vehicles
who dare to make the drive

Seconds, says the victim
whose distraction is demise.

(Today’s NaPoWriMo challenge is to bring something big together with something small.)

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Tribulations

A look back to two years ago. Sometimes we need the perspective of the rear-view image to put the present in better focus. How far we have come. (Photo from our earlier, healthier days.)

VJ's avatarOne Woman's Quest II

Preoccupation with my own woes blinded me to my husband’s suffering, which culminated in a heart attack on Saturday night.  We are shell-shocked.th-2

“That’s what happens to caregivers,” a callous nurse commented.  Am I supposed to feel guilty?

Unable to either drive myself, or push my own wheelchair, I am reliant on the goodwill of others to get me to the hospital, although even then, my body’s limits scream:  Halt!

I trust that my husband is in good hands, and getting the help he needs.  Meanwhile, I am home, alone, processing a gamut of emotions and what if’s.

thThis is not his first heart attack.  The first was silent, and according to the specialists, all but fatal.  It caused sufficient damage to have us all on edge.  Thank God I saw the signs and called 9-1-1 this time around.  The hospital said they will not release him until either medications…

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Be My Guest

I entertain worry
like a long-anticipated guest,
as if she is a distant relative
crossing oceans to visit me

I fluff up the pillows,
and bring out the good dishes,
setting aside well-worn routines,
as if comfort might reveal something

offensive to her senses,
as if she is the queen, and I am
honoured to be put out by her
not a word of complaint uttered.

I entertain worry,
making room for her family,
a cot for anxiety, a lounge for distress,
might even forego my own bed for insomnia

would hate to think that
I’ve been discourteous, failed to demonstrate
appreciation for those, often uninvited, who
temporarily take up residence in my home.

 

Joy Is a Bird

How is it, little one,
that you evoke such joy,
unaware that I stand idly by,
too preoccupied to care?

You flit about as if seconds
matter, and standing still
is blasphemy, and my lens
aches to capture you.

Stay with me, but a moment,
sing to me of wings and light,
let our hearts be one, two
souls in fleeting communion.

(The Daily Post prompt:  evoke.
Image from personal collection.)

They’re Just Family, After All

Performing this at my third open mic tonight, in honour of my dear friend Nadine who will not be able to attend. I know she loves this piece.

VJ's avatarOne Woman's Quest

In anticipation of guests,
the hostess – always bent
on pleasing – carefully selects
the script, ascribes roles,
envisions an afternoon
of light repartee, peppered
with philosophical pondering –
satisfactory entertainment.

They’re just family, after all,
she tells herself, confident
in the outcome, fatally smug.

Crowd arriving, she fails
to read disinterest in the eyes,
politely attempts to orchestrate
interactions, while they cast about,
calculating, shunning protocols
of etiquette,  dispersing in
an unsettling way, then returning,
savagely encircling their prey.

They’re just family, after all,
she tells herself, panic rising,
confusion overriding confidence.

Unprepared to defend herself –
bears no arms but the giving type –
she ducks, grasps, attempts
retreat from the onslaught
of vindictive agendas, but the wall
of stored grievances, spotlighting
a history of injustices, corners
her, hopelessness in its wake.

They’re just family, after all,
she tells herself, knowing
full well the legacy of pain.

It…

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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 mechanisms
of estrangement?

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

The pavement ahead whispers
promises of a sense of belonging,
can I tolerate the quest?

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

bring on change, there are others
watching, looking to me
as an example.

I can do it, on their behalf.

Never alone.

Always distances to cross.

 

 

Finding Home

Do we have to be away
to find home?

Not the mortgaged,
two cars in the driveway,
double income kind of dwelling

I’m talking peace
in the heart, comfort
in the soul, blessed home

I have felt Presence
in nature, witnessed Spirit
in a newborn baby’s eyes

beheld reverence in a dying
sister’s final breath; fleeting
glimpses, nothing solid

I seek an eternal sense
of belonging, of atonement,
to radiate a knowing, holy calm.

Don’t speak to me of books,
or passages, or a brother
with the voice of God

The home I seek is
an inner sanctum,
a whisper, a cry,

a longing answered
only in moments of pure
simplicity, in stillness

this noise we create,
this distancing, is only fear
and forgetting: products

of original separation,
a projection of abandonment,
remembering, experiencing

the numinous, the sacred other
brings me back home
and I am no longer alone.