Juxtaposition
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Category Archives: serious stuff
Flow
ponds of consciousness run deeper than flitting streams thought ripples take time
Finding Happy
The theme for this week’s Daily Post photo challenge is “happy place,” and the question is “where do you go to get your groove back?”
I don’t so much have a “happy place,” as I do a “contentment place.” When life gets a bit too chaotic, here are three of my “retreats”:
Walks with my buddy.
Getting lost in creativity.
Nature
I actually have many happy places. In fact, I’m in one right now. I call it “home.”
Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy Place
GLove
Skin so soft, I hesitate to touch it sometimes with my age-worn own. My knuckles, a roughened ridge spanning the width of my hand. Yours, an innocent row of dimples where hand meets fingers. When you reach up to hold my hand – or maybe just a finger or two – I am honored. It’s a gift, so swift in the offering that one might miss it, mistake it as just something we do, holding hands. But I catch it, and hold it, and tuck the feeling away in my mind, like a hand slipping into a glove, to keep warm for when coldness sets in.
WordPress Writing 201, Assignment Three. Prompt: skin. Form: prose poem. Device: internal rhyme.
Hand in Hand
Haiku Twelve ~ Flawed
some say love is blind true love perceives many flaws and loves nonetheless
In a Heartbeat
I heard your heartbeat today.
A fetal metronome
nestled in your mother’s womb.
Strong, fast, like a powerful locomotive
chugging away.
And all the more impressive
as it’s likely the size of
a grape seed.
How does your little heart know how to beat?
How was it set in motion?
Who wound the spring or
flipped the switch or
turned the key in the ignition?
Did it take a moment to warm up?
Or was the beat just there
like the first pounding notes of a John Phillip Sousa march,
striking up to dash the silence
in the blink of an eye.
Or – one might say – in a heartbeat.
Perhaps your precious heart
has been beating all along
somewhere in the Universe
waiting its turn to turn up the volume,
to resume its rhythm,
to pick up where it left off
in some prior lifetime.
Whatever miracle set your heart in motion
and brought it forth at this time and in this place,
I am honored to play a part in the symphony
for which it beats a perfect percussion.
It astounds me sometimes
how quickly life proceeds.
From a grape-sized fetus protected in the womb,
to a soft-skinned infant nestled in your parents’ arms,
it will happen in the blink of an eye,
or – one might say – in a heartbeat.
When you are born
I will not fall in love with you
at first sight.
I already fell in love with you
at first sound.
And it all happened
in a heartbeat.
World Oceans Day (photo essay)
Expansive and deep,
beautiful but volatile,
ample force to turn
vessels to splinters.
Teeming with life,
ceaselessly churning,
an indefatigable
dynamo.
Kissed by the sun,
caressed by the winds,
extolled by poets
and sailors alike.
Sustainer of life
as we know it on Earth,
yet with all its
grandeur and might…
still fragile.
What could be big enough to threaten and endanger our oceans (and thus our planet)?
Microplastics.
Microplastics particles, which are smaller than five millimeters in size, likely pose a massive environmental and human health risk when they enter our natural waterways.
Toxins including DDT, BPA and pesticides adhere to the particles, and because they can resemble plankton, they’re often ingested by small aquatic life. The toxins biomagnify as they move up the food chain, accumulating in birds, fish, marine mammals and potentially humans.
June 8th, 2015 is World Oceans Day.
What can we do to help “turn the tide” on the dangerous amounts of plastics polluting the oceans?
- We can work to increase awareness of the issue. Here’s a video of how one artist is doing that: Invisible Ocean: Plankton and Plastic. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated.
- We can choose not to buy and use products that contain plastic microbeads (as in certain brands of toothpaste, facial cleansers, soaps…).
- We can avoid using disposable plastic bags. (Take the Better Bag Challenge.)
These may seem like small steps toward tackling such a large problem ( just “a drop in the ocean,” so to speak), but that’s how things get done. Small actions lead to big changes.
Let’s act today.
Thanks to Jane (Just Another Nature Enthusiast) and her challenge at UNLESS: Earth-friendly Chroniclers: Challenge 11~ “Healthy Oceans – Healthy Planet” for the inspiration.
While Sitting on the Porch
While sitting on the porch
of the rustic cabin in the quiet pine forest,
I sense the faint beginnings
of the restoration of my soul.
I scan the wooded vistas,
seeing so much farther than
the usual confines of my restricted horizons,
seeing so much deeper into the reaches
of my self-forsaken heart.
Listening to the magpies
and the ospreys and jays, and
those pale green birds with the
beautiful songs that dance across the air,
I feel my inner voice begin to hum,
seeking out that melody that has for far too long
been scorned into silence.
I inhale deeply of the fresh forest air,
and I am finally able to exhale, long and slow,
releasing the toxic fear and tension
that I have been holding inside me
as if it were my last dying breath.
I can abide comfortably for once
among the trusted few that accompany me.
A light joke, a sweet hug…
fists and jaw and heart unclenching
like a leaf unfolding into new growth,
I open to the freedom that is offered
in the security of this sacred environment.
It is the quenching of a thirst long overdue.
Amidst the stillness of nature,
my own nature steps tentatively forward,
and I welcome my reawakening soul
as one would welcome the arrival of an old friend…
while sitting on the porch.
In Work
In Work I am co-creator with the One Creator, co-creator with all in the One Creation. In Work I sow seeds for the Harvest. A touch, a smile, a benevolent word… all are seed for Creation. Yet, what is the fruit of my work? When I dance on the shore and add my voice to the songs of the waves, can I know today that my song will touch a soul months, years, centuries from now? Can I know the steps of my dance will be remembered and retraced, long after their mark has been washed clear of the sandy beach? If this is so, shall I not rewrite the song? Make the tune more melodious, or the words more noble, perhaps? Add a swift spin or an elegant dip to the dance in vainglorious tribute to me… But then creation Work will have ceased and ego work commenced. And if my singing is lost to the uproar of the sea, if the imprint of my dance disappears with the sweep of the next tide, do I withhold the song, refrain from dancing? For Whom am I Working? If I cease the Work of sowing, I cease being a co-creator. And then what am I? In strained faith, I continue to sow. The harvest of my work I leave to the Harvester, Who knows when fruition is complete.
What Rhymes with Stanza? 