Tag: poetry

step fourteen

a five year old poem

#freedom & #paradise

five years ago, when it all started, one day, i noticed

he had posted my photos as his own

when i saw

my pics tagged #freedom and #paradise…

…it moved me… to feelthink…this:

#freedom and #paradise are simpler than nature but easy here

#freedom is mine as i let go of controlling anything and anyone but me

even though someone else gives me

attention

excitement

information

makes me

think

laugh

giggle

even though i look forward to spending time with that one

even though no one else makes me feel this way

even though no one else continues to bring out my smile so surely

even though i don’t want to miss any moment of togetherness with him

i know i will live if he decides to take all of this away.

i know that the sun will make my eyes sparkle in winter

i know that the moon will stir my imagination any time

i know that a warm breeze will feel like a hug even in solitude

i know that the ocean will always excite me

i know that even without books and the internet

i can go ogle over my doorstep and find magnificence

i can dance through my own world’s wide web and be tense as a tightrope with hunger for more knowledge

i can talk to strangers and listen to their stories

i can stand on my head and look at the water faucet upside down

just for perspective

as long as my mind submits to my intention, i manifest

#freedom is mine.

.~.~.~.~.~.             .~.~.~.~.~.             .~.~.~.~.~.

 

#paradise is

opening my eyes

deciding that my cup is half and filling

hope never dies

dark days help with light appreciation

poverty is a state of mind

bitter winds are here to keep us inside and introspective

remembering #freedom

& that #loving does not depend on receiving #love

as long as i stay free

#paradise is mine.

and both are yours as well.

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step twelve

as a child, i loved to read.

as an adult, i love to read sometimes, but when i do, i am a voracious, holistic reader.

when i took my dogs outside, i preferred letting them run in the backcountry, where it was just us, just them. i always felt that taking them for a walk around the neighborhood was like letting them read the same book, maybe different chapters, depending on who or what had visited at night.

but taking them to a wild, unknown place ~ that was like a whole library for these puppies.

the busier life gets, the less time i want to spend on reading books. autobiographical notes, human experience stories capture me, and then poetry. good, dense, multilayered poetry, simple words with complex meaning.

good poetry is what keeps my mind happy for days. it doesn’t come in the language of letters all the time. like my pups, i read fragrances and visuals. a field of lavender, a budding cottonwood tree, the smell of sweet grass, or even salmon running upstream, and letting go of life after they spawn… all those things are poetry to me.

and things like this, found today, in a most wonderful manual for a part-time position i am taking on – food for the soul, written by William Stafford:

The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life,
you will simply be overwhelmed.
You may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life, and you
do not know why, you are just lucky,
And you will not move in the little ways that
encourage good fortune.
The saddest of all are those who are not right
in their own lives who are acting to make
things right for others.
They act only from the self, and that
self will never be right;
No luck, no help, no wisdom.

—William Stafford
(1914-1993)