Tag Archives: healing

Let Them Run

Posted on by Standard 4
Re-posted from Enchanted Nature's Facebook page

Image re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page

I want freedom. Freedom from a tongue bound by convention. Freedom of thought that need not be harnessed back like horses wild. Let them run, I say. I want freedom of time that has no tick. No deadline. It belongs only to me. I am the boss who’s burning that midnight oil for inventions that build a life. My life. I want freedom of style as I slip on skinny jeans, GoGo boots and too much eyeliner. I want freedom of money, mullah, bank, green dogs braying with a jingling, jangling pick me up off my sad ass, hard times, hard luck self. I want freedom of space. Open plaines and wind swept deserts. Where I can walk a mile or ten in my crusty, beat up hikers and no one holds my line to any destination I desire. I want freedom of heart. Open it up wide as a storm gray clam glistening with sea water and pearls, while it still holds the grit I earned honestly. I want the freedom to love you. Love you as I take you into my skin, bury you deep in my belly and warm you up like mama’s stew. I want the freedom to open myself to possibilities and disaster. Good times and crazy adventure. I want freedom that only a bird knows. Alone, in a winter wood, with nothing but silence and every branch I own.

Work in progress from The Writing Church Writer’s group hosted by Marj Hahne, Boulder, CO. Inspired by the poem “What Do Women Want” by Kim Addonizio

Masted Ship

Posted on by Standard Reply
Bing free stock photos

Bing free stock photos

Your mistakes are your discoverer’s map. The means upon which you travel all seas ahead. You are no yeoman peeling potatoes in the galley. You are the captain and master of your vessel. All captains must know the feeling of beaching their vessel, losing their north star, struggling against the sea to hold the rudder on course to truly know the art of navigation. You must be willing to stand with a spent sail, no wind and no discernible idea where you are to develop the talents for finding your way home. This is how you come to feel deeply your metal.

To flay your heart, a tuna on the deck for the mere miss of a red light, a promotion not received, a misspoke word, or the bus not caught is to spend your life little more than the tie man grabbing the lines of other’s ships pulling into your port. We treat our sacred selves as slaves captured on lone islands doomed to a life of servitude, our light little more than a flicker. See more broadly not merely the horizon you travel toward, but the very helm upon which you stand. Your spirit is not in the dinghy. Regardless what your mind deceives you with as you look in the mirror, be assured. Your divine light is on a great masted ship and your sails are full.

Communion

Posted on by Standard Reply
Re-posted from the Mind Unleashed Facebook page

Image re-posted from the Mind Unleashed Facebook page

Long lines winding up an aisle in incense fog to papery offerings. A feeding of our soul so sterile I am drifting out the door before my mouth opens to receive. Receive what, exactly? Paper, bread, body, blood of Christ. A distorted figure that makes no sense, as I furtively glance at red dripped cross hanging, hanging, hanging for centuries that is an eternal damnation to a heart stuck on butt-worn bench. Sinner ever waiting to be clean. Sit, stand, kneel, sit stand, kneel. Tongues curling round words spoken in mindless cadence that eyes glaze from the loss of meaning. Cold seeps from stone floors into my shoes and all the wiggling toes will not warm my feet. I cough hard to shake the religious congestion loose, purulent and thick with dust.

Doors swing wide. Light pours in. Air fills my lungs.

Communion is the hunger flowing from my spirit alive and green. Running in open fields and winding up forest trails; exploding like Niagara out of the great northern territories. Communion that permeates my skin with loving rain and grounds my feet in Spring mud, a crocus rising at the equinox. Communion that fills me with such wholeness I can no longer tell where I end and dandelion seed begins its journey on the wind of my billow’s breath. Communion flooding the senses with peach juice down a child’s chin and autumn’s smoke of leaf fed fires the incense that opens the nostrils. Communion so sweet my mouth is filled with its mystical wonder and I sing out, an early morning robin alerting all to a day’s break. Communion that is an opening of the heart into a river that floods the delta with endless meandering trails that follow no crafted, structured pattern or timely release. Communion with the unknown, unrehearsed, unpredictable wonder of spirit. Now, on every breath, bookless hands raised to a midnight moon. For that I am famished, parched and deliciously ready to devour.

Working piece from Front Range Writer’s Group on reclamation of words. Marj Hahne facilitator.

Torn Asunder

Posted on by Standard 2
River bank collage in gold and purple: Photo by Noelle

River bank collage in gold and purple: Photo by Noelle

I did not understand the loss
Not the switchbacks in direction
Nor the unfulfilled need

I did not see the change
Or the push of the envelope
The strain to see

I hated the destruction
Crushed and laid barer
Than the hull without its seed

Down to bone you left me
Naked and exposed
Winds of confusion whipping me clean

Standing in dirt
Vines sprung up, wrapping
My naked bones with leafy tweed

Vines bore flowers that brought the bees
That pollinated my blossoms
With your divine beads

Which grew ripe and colorful fruit
That attracted the birds that took up
Nests in my mind to feed

Laying eggs of inspiration
All babies learning to fly
And then I knew I did see

Such a deep appreciation
For having been torn asunder
Destroyed and sanded to a reed

I was never the hull
Always the seed
And in muddied dirt You and I grew me

Little Gem: Joy and Sorrow

Posted on by Standard Reply
From flood to drought: Photo by Noelle

From flood to drought: Photo by Noelle

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Rain

Posted on by Standard Reply
Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook page

Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook page

Rain falls hard drains tick and rattle
Branches whip the window so bold
A frenetic heart beat, steady
In the closeness of the house
The sound is a chaotic symphony
That does not grace within
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

Cracking thunder
Light washes a dark field
Water rushes the stones
My chest fires back an adrenaline shot
Deep into my vessels it flows
Who is a storm now
My belly creaks
My breath shutters
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

Shadows dance
Trees sway, not lovers
More women thrashing wheat
In fields of silver rivers and
Matted grass
Leaves stick to the pane
While rivulets swing around them
Wild Celtic women
Dancing around a leaf alter
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

I am the rolling thunder
I am the relentless rain
I am the mad lightening that strikes the heart
And jolts my spirit awake in the
Wildness of an eternal dark
A mighty storm
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

Coming Winter

Posted on by Standard 2
Re-posted from Enchanted Nature's Facebook page

Re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page

COMING WINTER

The rain is steady across the field
And cold lays heavy on the pane
I welcome the turn inward
As fall drifts to winter’s mane

Fires are stoked without
And within a blaze burns, too
A warmth bathes my thoughts
As the blanket wraps the limbs, cocooned

Incubation brings reflection
In the way the clouds mirror on the lake
Real, rich and yet, transparent
To be remembered even as they fade

Gold leaves fall, wet and dark
In the growing wind
So I let my thoughts fall, too
Damp upon the skin

Winter lurks amongst the vines
Of the pumpkin patch, now bare
And I grow empty of a year’s losses
Floating lighter on this eve’s air

The fields are empty of there harvest
Apples are long to their bins
All things must sleep to be fertile
And I am now free to sleep in

Pooh: Little Gem

Posted on by Standard Reply
Bridge over Dutch Creek: Photography by Noelle

Bridge over Dutch Creek: Photography by Noelle

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” Winnie the Pooh

Marbles

Posted on by Standard Reply
Tunnel River Marble: Photography by Noelle

Tunnel River Marble: Photography by Noelle

I feel the edges of my thoughts
A blind woman reading brail
Stretching them further
I feel the thinness
Emotions never go as far
As the first stone thought tossed

There’s no pulling back
Once thought escapes
Electric charges fire into a
Neuro net sky
Frankenstein’s monster lives
And like his maker
I, too, love and hate
What I create

I turn inward
Withdrawing the great sustenance
My attention
Each thought suddenly a marble
Rolling around on the floor
Agates
And crystals
Real blown glass

All colored to a feeling
A place or time assigned
Catalogs lay open on gray matter tables
A jeweler placing an order
Fiery anger
Melancholy blues
What is the hue of the day?