Change is inevitable.
But perhaps a shift in expectations
may allow me a little control over that change.
Control is an illusion.
But perhaps a shift in perception
may allow me to see past that illusion.
Perception is subjective.
But perhaps that bias
may allow me to see what I really need
to face the changes.
Category: Poetry
Rhymed and unrhymed, form or free, this is where the poetry lives.
Tremble
Gazing through a ring
of aspen at cloud barges
sailing on a periwinkle sea.
Trembling branches reach out,
swaying, saying ‘hello’
or ‘goodbye’.
And I wonder.
Are the clouds sailing past us?
Or are we sailing past them?
I only know that I will never fear
to tremble again.
For after the trembling, and the
reaching out,
perspectives change.
Apricity
A word for the sun’s warmth on a winter day.
Because words like blessedness, bliss, paradise, delight, savor, and revel
Are not enough to encompass the pure joy
Of the unexpected warmth bathing my face
on a bright winter’s day.
Once Upon a Password
Once upon a password
I used to recollect
the obscure encryption
I invented to protect
my email from those hackers
so they wouldn’t see
my personal correspondence
or steal my ID.
But now it’s getting harder
to invent those ciphers
that defend my info
and permeate my life.
Upper case and numbers,
symbols interspersing,
make it look like comic book
characters are cursing.
And by the time I’ve memorize
the password I’ve arranged,
a faceless message tells me that
it’s time the password changed.
And now I must start over…
seriously? really?
I wonder how you spell
‘password’ in Swahili?
One
I live in a bubble, life
playing out around me in comforting
rhythms, familiar if not predictable.
Passive spectator except on those
rare occasions when the bubble pops
and the world stands forth, stark and clean.
Colours sing that three dimensions,
five senses,
one lifetime,
are not enough
to experience a world so real
and I know that if I could just stay
outside the bubble I could hold time
in the palm of my hand, vanquish
the dragons of pain, fear, and longing, see
inside hearts, and speak without words.
Then a random, mundane thought intrudes
and the bubble sneaks up around me again, clouds
the freshness, lulls my senses.
But just before the bubble closes I wonder
‘is this what becoming one with the universe means?
Was I there and I blew it again?
Will I ever find my way back?’.
I feel in my bones this world
I’ve glimpsed is a stepping stone
to eternity and if I could just stay
long enough to find my way
I would sprout new senses, fly
into a new dimension, the next lifetime.
The dragons growl.
The bubble closes.
The Long, White Struggle
It’s a long, slow slog;
this stuttering transition
from winter to spring
with hopes of greenery
thawed and frozen all along
the dirty, white way
until you cave in,
like a collapsing igloo,
and believe the ice
age has come for you;
encased you eternally,
one hand on the box
labelled ‘Spring Clothing”
the other on your down filled coat,
desperate with hope
even through nightmares
of hard, white piles crushing
your warm breath to mist.
“It’s supposed to get up to plus eleven by next Friday” he says.
I’ll believe it when I see it
Like a Bird
Your heart, like a bird
fluttering, testing the winds
of change in your soul
before taking flight.
Breath-taking fibrillation
shocks us to the now
where a breathe can hang
like mist in the frozen air
then crash to the ground,
tiny icicles
shatter, chime through the silence
“it’s time to go home”
Aubade to Spring
A nervous twitch of heavy curtains,
a wary peering into first light.
What song will I sing? A trill
of joy thrilling at a pool of sunlight
warming my bare
feet or a dirge for dreams
of spring, battered
by northeast winds and smothered
in yet more snow.
Is it all bad?
No, today the sun shines and, at least
for a while, it is ‘aubade’.
Frozen Pride
There’s a northern sense of pride
in battling winter and surviving
minus forty, minus fifty,
icy fog and snowy drifts. We
soldier on in our uniforms;
long underwear to keep us warm,
and scoff at tender souls who live
in milder climes and shake and shiver
at minus five and have to close
the city down for an inch of snow.
We post the current temperature;
a brag of what we can endure;
a challenge to post a lower number,
to northern soldiers in other bunkers.
Year after year we earn our stripes
through furnace fails and frozen pipes,
when trucks die and the power goes out
you discover what cold is all about.
We’ve fed the woodstove through the night
and melted snow by candlelight.
We’ve earned our medals in the ice and cold
but the years roll on and we’re getting old
and we’ve paid our dues and we’ve fought our fight
and we just want a little bit more sunlight.
It’s not retreating, just retiring
to a place where the temperature is higher.
I leave the struggle to the young
who have the strength to carry on.
Old soldiers who’ve battled winter and won,
Deserve their moments in the sun.
Ashes
I forgot to post this poem – it was written on the 6th as we were travelling through the Cariboo. The haze made the background seem two dimensional.
Treed mountains, layered in smoke,
recede into the haze; cut-out silhouettes; mere jagged,
misty dreams of the real terrain beneath.
And in the foreground emerge the trees, clearer now,
more defined, more detail in their sweeping boughs and
pendant moss; skeletons of their ancestors propped up
in their arms, standing witness.
There is a sense of waiting in the air
and a taste of ashes on the tongue.
Linda Studley 