Variations on White

In my laboratory where I conduct

experiments on the living

connections which emerge

as I magnify my focus,

a red cardinal flits by.

Brown trees hold up

the lucent white sky.

The frosted white water

is ringed by whiter snow.

This word white is useless.

I scattered black sunflower seeds

under the brown thicket of lilac,

the impenetrable screen so favored

by the wintering songbirds.

Earlier, a pair of dark ravens

flapped in, one settling at the tallest tip

of the oak across the street,

the other accompanying a barred

owl into the poplar.

Noble birds in majestic trees.

Hunters playing

off each other’s unique talents,

usually hidden in the dark

but at dawn,

sitting

at just the right angle

I watch the soundless drama.

The day-old fullness

of moon brightens

all this glowing

until the first intimations

of purple and pink

blaze under the blanket

of white.

 

Inspired by:  Noble, Angle, Magnify and Laboratory.

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FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real)

Before dawn, the sky is filled

with two full moons, strange

since at last glimpse midnight,

she was mostly swallowed by

a circular shadow.  Caught in dreams,

I light a candle, reflecting on my

windowpane something significant

I’ve asked to be shown.

Be careful what you ask for,

my true being plastered over

with so many false beliefs

until I am encased in this marble

statue, a derivative

of

something greater than I can

wrap my mind around.

There is nothing left

to do besides

play

crunching over the ice

with the bitter cold

stealing my breath

aiming my camera in every direction

in a futile attempt

to capture the beauty

of this instant.

Inspired by the super full moon, the partial lunar eclipse, Lunapics fun filters, and the prompts: Dream, Derivative, Marble and Plaster.

Out of Order

This morning I am mourning

what is lost

that I never missed,

am glad to see the last of,

lucky to lose,

what was shattered

by the blunderbuss of my

triggered fight and

flight before the air is clear.

Sometimes I move too quickly

to the place of understanding,

admiring the silver lining

with a type of inane psychobabble,

a lightworker’s energetic

healing before even stanching

the blood, sterilizing

and careful stitches,

the timely response.

Not even a simple

damn, that hurt  

before seeking someone

to kiss the booboo.

Lost, too, in that futile

longing 

to be 

heard

and seen

in all my exquisite pain.

I bring to you these jagged scars

like a box of photographs

I’ll show and tell

before I feed them

to the hungry flames

of this funeral pyre.

Shall I list my tinder

offerings?  Here is love,

a dream, trust,

a child, a chance.

Here what was owed, never paid.

Anger.  A friend,

faith, songs,

so many poems.

They catch and spark

symbolic kindling

to reach the logs

stuck in the dark places

where the lost things smolder

when finally, I bring them

into the necessary heat.

Inspired by Lost, Inane, Timely, Blunderbuss and Exquisite.

Under The Tundra

I strain toward the present

moment, tiptoeing across

frozen river

memories instrumental in

splintering me

thousands of sharp pieces

held together in a purely

illusionary woman

you see before you.

Be gentle with your grandmother,

I urge this boisterous

little boy, who knows my heart-

child is always

eager to play

out the stuck places.

We wriggle and jump.

Down dog to find missing pieces.

He nestles into my safe

lap for stories

and we learn

we only reach now

together, holding space

that includes prior pains

we can rewrite

when we go back

to the beginning

with strong new love.

 

Inspired by:  Memories, Instrumental, River and Splinter.

Bless Me If I Stay Alive

Freezing a waterfall is not…easy, since the water molecules are continuously moving and can therefore easily detach from the bonds holding them together. ~ Ashish

 

When I was 10, I wrote a letter

to my grandmother, seeking

facts about her lineage.

Finally, at 26, over cocktails,

she confessed she’d received

a missive from a maiden grandaunt

upon her marriage, an envelope

filled with family facts.

She’d pitched it, saying,

who cares about this shit?

finding out exactly decades later

reading my request.  Those are

our only two encounters I recall.

Still, I carry my grandparents’ enmity

like this photograph, a frozen

waterfall of immense power

inaccessible to two

drunk teenagers, dismayed

by the arrival of needy

children exposing their own

unaddressed wounds.  Only able

to call for more

alcohol and hatred,

finally repelled like magnets

from each other and the seedlings

their brief union sprouted.

I’ve tested the ice gingerly

to arrive at their trauma

locked inside my own genes,

now demanding I thaw

what has been blocked.

And so under the heat of my

regard, I set out to accomplish

this feat, releasing the flow

of energy to my own

descendants waiting impatiently

downstream.

 

Inspired by:  Photograph, Enmity, Letter and Accomplish.

Title inspired by Bert Hellinger in Looking Into The Souls Of Children, “Behind the scene we…see something else is at work, and the individual is at the mercy of something that does not reveal itself easily…other powers are at work, and the people involved do not understand what’s really going on….Go to these dead…and say to them, “Bless me if I stay alive.”  

Photograph taken 1981 in Queen’s Canyon, Colorado.

Redeem On Demand

This movement toward freedom is natural and unstoppable and good.” ~ Pauline Kael

Deep inside me is the divine core,

and here is where resides

this sacred internal partner

flowing through me,

making me an instrument

of peace and love, bright

tones suffusing the air

opening every heart

to birthright.

Even in the depths of grief,

the torrential outpouring

of anger, the song

spills out, unstoppable,

holding us in our most forlorn

moments, invisible refrains

of high intelligence always

open, available,

free love

surging forth in our remorse,

screaming frustration an opening

even the tiniest, most inaudible

invitation granted

instant response.

Inspired by: Forlorn, Frustration, Remorse and Partner

Marie’s True-Dream-Power

Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything.  Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Because if there’s something I know

nothing about, it’s

everything

and the way words

erase experience 

like the First Nations languages

brutally ripped

from throats.

We are caged so precisely

that when Marie dreams 

her long-dead dad is laughing,

patting her burgeoning belly,

ah, how he’s longed for this 

grandchild,

she wakes confused —

so vivid,

but it can’t be real,

right, because he’s dead,

right, and she must be crazy

even though her hidden lineage

pulses with altered-states-words

for alternate realities which exist

alongside this waking 

we insist

is the one and only 

narrative for our lives.  

Turning away from the powerful

appetite for messages from our dead

because it can’t be real —

it’s not allowed to be real —

caught in the web of deceit

of the waking dream

that closes our options

like firmly locked gates

and boarded-up portals.

Today in the clarity of my wild

ambition, I create new

lovelight emanating from

me clearing

what I’ve held for the planet.

Relaxing fully.

The ebullient-belly rising

in the liminal spaces

where patriarchal-chasms open

the uttering-uterus-undulating

child-inside the intuitions

men dismiss.

Standing on the dream-threshold

with messages from a long-

dead father and which is the

real-state, our child-murmuring

in the pool of ancestral-fluid

that carries us

deep in our center, where

dreams are surely closer

to the sacred spaces,

more tangible

than this table or the curtains

fluttering in our attentive breeze

until they are not.

Because what is reality

but a shaky-card-house

resting on allowed perceptions

doled out by people

intent on control?

Dealing the narrative-cards,

keep the king, jettison the joker,

no value in pure fantasy.

Still, my ancestors send me living 

messages; I burp four times

as I write this line. 

Inspired by: Clarity, Ambition, Ebullient, and Appetite.