Tag: poetry

Reflecting and Rebuilding

Considering
refurbishing
childhood home

Unrecognizable now
numerous makeovers
and even re-purposing

But my heart is invested
and well, I can see potential
and, oh…I know it will take work

All the walls I’ve torn down
and the excess furniture
and how I’ve imagined duplicity

Is this folly on my part
this revisionist thinking
see…I’m sure there is treasure

hidden amongst the forgotten
buried perhaps in the attic
or other overlooked nook

And as I remember it,
the backyard is an oasis –
Yes! I think I’ll do it!

Reflection and a good dose
of elbow grease, and I’m in!
Recreating an upbringing.

(for Eugi’s Weekly Prompt: reflection. Image my own.)

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’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 lost.

(Finding Home was first published here in February of 2017. I resubmit an edited version for Reena’s Xploration challenge: sacred space. Image my own.)

Dreaming Archetypal

She rises from the river –
a culmination of my prayers
and tears, I suppose

Eyes glow with a ungodly hunger
Is she predator or night prowler
I wonder, frozen from fright

Disinterested in ego, ignoring
perfection, she multiplies
her energy frenetic

I try to harness her,
tame the primal, raw force
fear I cannot house her

But she is no one’s property
moves with fluidity, a shapeshifter
mythical in her stride

Like Eve, she is original sin
searching for deeper meaning
beyond this man-made paradise.


(Image and poem originated in a dream. Not sure I did the message justice but it begged delivery.)

The Car Crash

That time, playing in the muck,
foot emerging without boot,
hopping and laughing
all the way home.

Then, later, on the bus
that car hitting where we sat
the windshield cracking
like a giant spider
blood all over the dead lady’s face.

I thought I’d made it
when my new car had a sunroof
kids riding along, music blaring

But trauma is a spider
Arachne reaching into happy places
and as much as I speed up to avoid her

Fight to disable her attack
she weaves herself new limbs
begins the onslaught anew

And I am stuck in the mud again
no longer limber enough
to dance my way home in the rain.