imagination – One Woman's Quest

Colouring Lessons

Favourite colour?
Black, says she
without hesitation

I falter, stumble,
mind reaching –
who likes black?

Is that a colour?
It’s all colours!
She’s nonchalant

intent on task –
carefully keeping
within the lines

Of course it is...
ill equipped am I
to disagree, images

of dark somber
corners, sorrow
and death crows –

Why black? ask I,
composure forced –
had anticipated pink

equate childhood
with primary shades,
splotches of yellow

and rainbow skies,
candy red apples
on lollipop trees

But black? No –
black obliterates,
negates, destroys

It holds the colour
inside, she explains.
It’s the outline.

Not annihilation –
order; her mind
conceives of order

So much to learn
from innocence,
have long forgotten

the art of staying
within lines, finding
good in all things.

(Colouring Lessons first appeared here June, 2017. Image my own)

The Light Fades

Light fades
sun’s optimism
giving way to shadows

My eyes are drawn to hidden places
warily seeking the source of this disquiet
What beasts inhabit crevices, what creatures lurk
hiding in the trees that loom over me?

Could it be the incarnation
of trapped souls
taunting my passage?

(Image my own)

Wonder Cycles

Every child a dreamer
school the tribunal
where imagination
is sentenced to death

Adulthood is a canyon
where ambition shelters
the broader view, till age
resurrects the child.

(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson.
Image my own.)

Untethered

Tether me
to the riverbank
I will resist

There are currents
to follow, contours
to memorize

Let me soar
these wings capable
imagination intact.

(Image mine)

Keep Imagining

Elaborate, the tree forts
imagination envisions

Indifferent, the rationale
that overpowers inspiration

I balk, abandon hope,
build a wall instead,
forgetting…

Creativity is not linear,
tolerates input, planning,
some alternatives preferred.

(Featured image from personal collection. Doesn’t it just say: “Climb me!”? This image is a Live Oak, in Texas, and is available on various products at Society6.)

Imagination Fuelled

Words encased,
mysteries bound –
their secrets unlock

neon possibilities –
light exploding,
neurons swirling

no containing
the magic unleashed
when pages turn.

(For Willow Poetry’s What Do You See? challenge. Photo supplied by Hélène Vaillant.)

Breeding Paranoia

Manufacture fresh starts –
build bridges across the abyss,
stay afloat,
imagining –

mythical passages,
fantastical places,
magic of wizardry

just keep the foes submerged,
act carefully,

the house
is under surveillance,
observers
quietly learning.

Remember when lines meant challenge
and colouring was not confined to
parameters, but an invitation
to explore, and days spent
contemplating invited
song, and nothing
really mattered
except the
moment?

There is a place
balanced between
the bustle of doing and
the edge of non-existence
where fantasy beckons,
where aged minds, content
with past accomplishments
come to rest, to ponder –

who once again recognize
that lines hold no significance,
that colours know no limits,
that music uplifts the mind,
and that memories are places of
exploration, and the moment
is all we ever have.

Nested

Nestled in with childhood truths –
second-hand, missing perspective –
nursing a creeping creativity:
insignificant clarity expanding
measurably, hurried.

Once social, now retreating
papered over failure, have fallen
frigid waves infiltrating, overtaking
chronically pained, over and over
contemplating flight, freedom

voiceless, expressionless, flat
even revelation muted, unmoving
boundaries, discussed, protective
currently crumbling…underestimated
the struggle, the pervasiveness

have considered a military approach
strident restrictions to nullify passions
but I am a weaver, open to uncovering
blessings in failure, employed in soaring,
grounded, yet questing, unsettled

disease is not a repellent for the mind,
objects conjure movement, creatures
undoubtedly defensive, renewal motivated
I am dank, moist, lacking burning passion
in this explosive personal nest.