Disengaged

Housekeeping
she now did online,
often sweeping clean the page
of those items which,
in the evolving course of things,
no longer fit the feng shui.
From real housekeeping she'd been
disempowered ... age 17.
While they shamed her for sneakers with skirt,
the contempt in their eyes
burned up family ties.
Thus dislocated, then stricken
with PTSD in the woods
(as the PTSD, itself, informed her,
in its details of manifestation,
when her consciousness later awakened to it
in its 20-something year of occurrence
as it occurred, once again,
beside a forest ...
herself twirling 'round, quick as a whip,
this way, then that --
for from behind which woodsy shrub or tree
would the maniacal frog-man leap?
She couldn't be quick enough
to apprehend him from any direction,
were he to pop up and strike.
To silence the battle,
she would have to go inside
and close the door.
How many times had she been defeated
by the presence of nearby forest
this way ... needing to go inside
and close the door
to silence the physical, but not visual,
flashback
to an event now blocked
from her inner sight?)
Altered within,
she could no longer memorize
any song on the piano,
nor take charge of her household landscape,
for nothing in it -- including her family --
was hers,
anymore.

Like the First Christmas

So weary am I this Christmas Eve --
not a present could I buy.
No tree, no stocking -- all is bare,
except our hearts -- no lie.
This Christmas have we to shiver through,
hard times and blankets galore.
The holy manger had no frills --
no retail in any store.

This poem was begun by me on December 24th, 2022 and concluded on December 28th.

~ Turquoise

Northeast

She sits on her bed,
unable to take leave
of blanket over toes, part-numb --
no reprieve.
The drafts drift in
as the heat drifts out;
the walls, paper-thin --
no use walking about.
Ice bites the air
behind her back;
she dreams of wood stove
and chimney stack.
Thirty degrees or so --
with heat.
Cold, cold hands
and freezing feet.

Missive

I had a dream that I'd posted an invitation to our local spiritual group meeting, and I woke up "realizing" that I would "have to cancel" that nonexistent "invitation" of mine for today. My heart sighed -- in reality -- with missing that meeting. Because it's Christmas Eve day, the meetings will resume next week. Sounds rather backwards, doesn't it? I really needed that meeting today ... when "too busy" drowns out the sublime hum of Blessed Mother's quiet, patient waiting to bear The Christ ...

I go to that meeting whenever I'm able to, because there I can find a gathering of people, coffee, desserts I'm not supposed to have, and conversation. Yes, the conversation happens to be about God, centering upon the God-man, Jesus. Now and then a morsel reaches me and probably nourishes me in the regions of my spirit I cannot see or feel. I typically don't "feel" much in regard to my faith, although I'm probably supposed to. Faith, for me, has never been based upon religious feelings about God. That would be impossible, as I've never had even the bare minimum of "religious" "feeling."

I typically find my Christianity in weeds and pebbles on the road; in abandonment, insults, heartbreak, crushed spirit, accidental musings, and moments which spark realization; in Biblical time connections which link prophetic references; and -- most rare, but treasured when it happens -- in memory found or suddenly hoped for.

This morning, I was reminded -- again, because I do try to forget at times when the teaching demands much -- of "where my bread is buttered," and Who is the source of both my bread and my butter.

It is He -- that Baby God Who was born, poor as dirt, beside the animals ... as close as possible to those pebbles and weeds.

Yes, He can be found along the road.

~ Turquoise

The Beauty of Personhood

You can call the trouble "politics,"
but for me it's not the same.
What wounds me is no invites --
no matter your party name.

Roads I Never Knew

A violin grew up in Brooklyn,
its master's hand commanding
rhythms crisp and clear,
like budding branches springing to life
in the dance of time.
Through tones of smoothest silk,
love's sweetness unfolded
like the petals of a rose.
Gershwin and Rachmaninoff
stirred the young master's soul,
soul of the 1920s,
violin his beloved companion.
Only the old violin knows
the rest of that musical story,
the story belonging to the boy
who knew, as I never did,
those Brooklyn roads.

Written by me on September 2, 2022.

The Two Rivers

We bring out joy
at the saddest times
to fuel buoyancy and life;
for joy does not contradict
sorrow,
both arising from the
wellspring
of free-flowing
emotion.

Raining Cherokee

Shock vacuumed up the years
into its tornado,
dropping them back from the sky
piece by piece
decades later ...
I, the gangly 1960s girl
with a space between her two buck teeth,
long unrecognizable
after braces and four teeth pulled for them,
teeth which, like others still surviving,
might also have borne traces of
American Indian heritage,
advised to me as Cherokee.

 

[Todd Rundgren, below, resembles the younger me -- and I do so love this song.]

The Roeboat That Sank a Nation

Moment of joy,
eclipsed;
slaughter of the innocents
real now --
titanic.
No room, no time
for victory.
Bow heads.
Press on.

Broken Kitchen

When life slows down to one pinpoint at a time,
you notice the buds, the blooms, the tendrils --
your world writ big by God's life force.
And that is all that matters.
When you are no longer useful
except to love,
you weep as you rejoice
in still being alive.
Run, body and soul, to the
embrace
of all that is innocent and peaceful --
the only worthwhile and loving
place to run.

May Leaves

If the wind would just stop
blowing this way and that
in random indifference,
gusts breathing out
the forgotten,
rushing to leave them
behind.

A Song of Hope (Singing with my son)

 

CC134 · All That Is Hidden - by Bernadette Farrell (cover version)

Becoming

Freedom
is an inside thing;
to love,
a joyful choice.
To choose to give, to choose to forgive:
the most meaningful freedom there is,
as one's own heart is sculpted
by its strengthening of another's.

Amidst the Chill

An unknown terror ambushed my awareness
in the forest
and rushed past me,
demonic and
crazed,
leaving me with an unspeakable
nightmare.

God's light of truth is in that hideous memory
yet to be fully uncovered;
and that speck of certainty
keeps me warm.

Flash of White

The bare, written truth is neither interpersonal speech
nor its substitute.
It is a reality so strong,
it burns through the soul,
white hot,
flashing its light through the heart, into the mind,
until precise words can shape and carry it
to the blank page.

Lost

The hills cry and
the grass screams
and the sun bears down
over the New York border,
over the New York border,
over the New York border.  

Written and originally posted by me on a presently archived blog of mine on September 8, 2020.

On the Outside

First notes struck --
suspense building, and ...
nothing.
I cried hard
this time --
because I could not remember.
I,
for whom musical recall defines
every momentous yesterday,
could not feel even a twinge of familiarity
toward the prelude which had
ushered me onstage.
As in my having learned -- from another -- of my
baffled moment
while playing piano in the pit,
when the director admonished the singer,
I was now an outsider, once again,
to my own meaningful flow of being.
My alternately filed nuances of memory
(by this, realized as hidden
in compartments secret from me) --
the thing which
excludes me.
And so I beheld,
as a first-time audience,
the magical introduction
to my own character's entrance
over 40 years past,
while the tears streamed down --
because I had never
heard anything like it.

Silent Stroll

No matter that the road and driveway were impassable with snow-covered ice. The singing birds knew better. 

Dappled with sunlight on the inside, she glanced outside to the gray but bright mountain vista this early evening in early February. Although seated at her desk, in her mind she strolled outdoors, on a warmer gray day -- yes, in the morning, on an unimposing gray day! -- filled with all the colors of bold winter and tender Spring, deep shades and pastels intertwined in her heart. Buoyed up, infused with His strength, touched by His peace, her spirit was reassured. "Reassured of what?" one might have asked her. "Reassured of anything," she might have answered.

Jesus: God. The longer she knew Him, the less she knew Him ... but the more she knew that He knew her.

As Thunder

The silence that falls
after one utters thoughts which, to oneself,
are as natural as rainwater,
is as thunder exploding
from a sunlit blue sky.

Where It Goes Blurry

Trauma, far from casting doubt
on the idyllic picture it punctures,
testifies, by contrast of itself,
to the beauty and precision
of all that came
before.