Boy of mine you’ll always be
Treasured by your dad and me
One thing will always be true
From moment one I have loved you
One smile from you, my spirits lift
Your very name means God’s Own Gift
Know that you have brought me joy
As you move on now, my sweet boy
Flannel {NaPoWriMo 8}
I reached down this morning
Scooped your pajamas off the floor
You left them there again
I smiled, held blue plaid to my cheek
Whispered thank you to Heaven
For the man I love who wears
That flannel
For Me {NaPoWriMo 7}
Up high on a hill
You let your life be nailed down
You did that for me
Poemcrazy
I wrote this poem while reading Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy. I titled it…well, “Poemcrazy”.
Poemcrazy
i must have created quite a picture
dozing with a giant white bear
in the crook of my arm
Poemcrazy scrawled across the bookjacket
covering my face and making a slight
indentation across my right cheek
it wasn’t a nap, entirely
not even rest, since words danced and floated
through my mind, tempting, tantalizing
like a cummings poem i’d read as a child
(it stuck with me, his style, only i didn’t know then
that something in me was secretly longing for that kind
of freedom; i rediscovered him today in the pages pressing against my forehead)
i must have seemed a taciturn eccentric
hands limp and relaxed as verse took shape
behind the book resting on my face
shielding my eyes from the sunlight of midday
(though not my ears from the whine of a weed machine
wielded by a well-intentioned neighbor)
i recalled lines i’d read moments before
and how i had smiled at the mention of word games
i’d played in my girlhood
how did she know
i dreamed in word tickets of meander and flummox and herb garden
and winery and worthlessness and side-winder
while the whining ebbed and flowed and breezes blew
and my hair tickled me awake
so even though it might appear i’d left behind
lazy susans and black-eyed peas and catharsis
in the land of a people i call the ballantrae
my favorite thing of all is that
i feel a little bit like a poet today
{Linking up with dversepoets today}
When you’re being splashed across a canvas
A small green paintbrush captured me today
Brushed me across a canvas rough but welcoming
Moved like music over the whiteness and left it with a face
Not quite smiling, but far from sad
The lines blurred slightly, but it was me
Colors thrown across the surface
With purposeful abandon
Eyes staring back like midnight orbs
Hauntingly mine
An artistan’s easel held me today
Cradled me like a timid child
Rocked me with a subtlety only an artist could know
Strong legs held me fast
Completely balanced but not so firm
As to rob me of the edge
The knowing that at any moment I could fall or fly
Or fade
A master created me today
Or maybe just allowed me to see what was already there
Held up the magic mirror where only fools look in
And I looked, fool that I am, and smiled
Seeing for the first time my truth
Reading the page with perfect understanding
Knowing I would never be the same
Nor would I want to be
Anyone but me
___________________
Featured at Write Where It Hurts
If you could see that you are a poet
“Like the nectar of the bee, which turns to honey the dust of flowers, or like that liquor which converts lead into gold, the poet has a breath that fills out words, gives them light and color. He knows wherein consists their charm, and by what art enchanted structures may be built with them.”
–Joseph Joubert
The world could use a bit more poetry. I wrote to a group of friends one late summer day that I had “waved until their I-love-you hand signs disappeared around the corner and I couldn’t see them any more”. The next morning I received a poem from my friend Sarah.
Waving at your I-Love-You hands
Watching them fade away,
Waiting to see them come back again,
Back to our home someday.
Missing the touch of I-Love-You hands,
Stroking my hair and face,
Holding, strengthening, carefully keeping
The world in its over-there place.
Knowing wherever I-Love-You hands go
How calloused and hard they become,
That their softness stays in the love in your eyes,
And they’ll return and your words will come.
No more need for I-Love-You hands
When I-Love-You feet bring you home,
When my-love-you ears hear I-love-you voice
And our separate days are done.
I’ve been talking a lot with my cousin about a variety of things, but mostly about family and reunions and how hurricanes turn the skies to purple and the sea to azure and how it can nearly capsize a boat but when you hold tight to the rigging and breathe in the beauty of the storm there is a richness that life infuses into your senses that can barely be worded. But word them, she did, exquisitely.
“It is the sky that is so wonderful…purple, blue red, green—yes, even now at night—the wind sounds like haunting mysteries, the rain beats down like a mad man and then stops like one just to start again.”
I read her words and I wonder what it would be like if we all took time to step outside the ordinary and seek the deep, the descriptive, the breathtaking beauty God has woven into the fabric of our days that leave them anything but mundane. Do we dare?
What if we lived in poetry?
What if we remembered we were created by the most imaginative Creator of all, and that He infused us with His mystery, His beauty, His artistic revelation—and then took just a moment or two of our day to thank Him in an echo of His expression of us?
Don’t say you aren’t a poet. We all are. What do you long to express, communicate, describe? I invite you…you!…to think beyond the ordinary and dig deep for those words—the ones that will set your heart to racing and touch the deepest parts of your creative being—and pour it all out for His pleasure and yours and ours. Here. Somewhere. Anywhere.
God deserves it. We all long for it. You will live richer for it.
Go on. Dare.
______________________
Featured at Write Where It Hurts
Depression isn’t all in your head
No one in depression should ever be told to just get over it. What most people don’t know is that there is more than one way to say, “Just get over it.”
Sometimes it sounds like other things. Well-meant things.
“Well, if you’ll just pray about it, you’ll be fine.”
“Just go get meds.”
“Stop thinking about your past!”
“Counseling will bring you back to your real self.”
“Pour it all into your journal and let it go.”
I’m not knocking all aspects of these suggestions, necessarily, but I do wish people could understand what I discovered when I went through clinical depression 14 years ago:
Depression isn’t all in your head.
I also discovered that the best advice I can give someone in depression is to find what helps him/her specifically, and do it.
All that said, while I didn’t write myself out of depression, I did find great comfort in wording my heart, my questions, my confusion.
RAINING
it’s raining outside and inside me
the siren is crying like I wish I could
and my joys are out there in the rain
drowning like I sometimes do
there’s a steady screeching from another room
relentless, though it fades now and then
pitched in such a way
that I cringe at the sound
but I guess it’s all part of it somehow
almost like helplessness
almost like sorrow but not quite
music from somewhere tries to soothe
and I wish it could
I wish it could
I reach a limp hand toward something, anything
in a poor attempt at gaining strength
God, it’s raining
if only I could lie my head on my pillow
and rest from the pressing in
the expectations
they’re counting on me
I could never let them down
the tree outside my window looms over my world
not bringing me fear but comfort
its giant branches poised willow-like
to hold me
and though it bends in the wind of this storm
it is strong enough for both of us
why does music search my soul thus?
would that I could escape such knowing
the cello and dulcimer see inside this heart
if only the pain would float away with the notes
and the rain could wash away the worry
I need to be alone
listen to the music
listen to the rain
rest under my tree
feel almost free
it’s raining
Writing didn’t cure me. Attention to my health from all angles (physical, mental, spiritual, emotional) is what pulled me through the deepest, darkest time of my life and let me live to tell about it. Writing helped me to process what was happening in my head and heart so I could understand it better and share it with you.
And now? I continue to word my story so others will have the courage to word theirs.
__________________
Featured at Write Where It Hurts
Tell Me {to honor those who have served}
{A tribute to those who have served, and those who have given their lives for our freedom}
Tell me your stories, my brave-hearted friend,
Of all of the courage you’ve shown.
Tell me of battles and nights without sleep,
Of all of the heartbreak you’ve known.
Paint me a picture as seen through your eyes,
That mine have been blessed not to see,
Of all of the hardships you faced through the years
To help keep the rest of us free.
Tell me of letters you never could write,
Of blood shed and left in the sand;
Tell me, I beg you, of all of these things,
That I might, in some way, understand.
Tell me your thoughts as you look back through time,
Just a glimpse of the things that you feel.
Show me the scars you have borne for my sake,
For your wounds mean my freedom is real.
Please tell me your stories again and again,
Of dangers and perils you’ve met,
And allow me to thank you for all you have done;
Please, never let me forget.
_____________
Featured at Write Where It Hurts
The Guarded
Guarded safe by fence of steel
Cannot cry and cannot feel
Never need or hurt or grieve
It’s what I want them to believe
Walls are strong and chasm wide
I need no one by my side
Sitting in a rocking chair
Late at night with no one there
Longing, my unwelcome guest
Battles to disturb my rest
Will I ever know sweet peace
I cannot fathom such release
Borne on wings of angel wind
Gift of God, an honest friend
Walls all tumble, bridges span
When love extends a guileless hand
I reach across the Great Divide
To find me somewhere by her side
Featured at Write Where It Hurts
Red
A young girl, a basket, a cloak of deep red
A grandmother sickly and frail in her bed
An enemy greedy and heartless and vile
Clever and sly and adept to beguile
Sneering and snuffing the sun’s final ray
Evil triumphant in glee wins the day
Victory lovely as cake and sweet wine
Sings as the glutton endeavors to dine
Soon are the notes hammered silent and still
Vanquished by Good and the strength of His will
Ere our long journey be swept up in death
We are assured of His life-giving breath
We stray from the path but His promises stand
Nothing can steal us for long from His hand
A Beautiful Life 