Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
To the Endurance of Dandelions - Freedom
The title poem was written to Roger MacBride, a fellow activist in the Freedom Movement and the second candidate for President nominated by the Libertarian Party, who ran for the office in 1976.
The hunger to be free to express, live, become, is at the core of all that is good and decent in humankind. Flawed, frightened, battered, we find the courage to persist because we must.
Written in Spring of 1999. On line to lovers, friends, soul mates and children.
Most of my poetry is available for reading, in strict chronological order, at:
1.
Wind winnows hair
Walking, breathing, laughing, free
This, the best of what can be.
Tasting, touching, loving, glad
This the best that can be had.
Winnowing through idle truths
To find the glow of lies rebuke
Gleaning rapture from a song
That languishes but melts along
The odor of a new fledged-rose
Kisses me and so my nose
These, the pleasures born of life
Are sure pledges of joys height.
This, a poem for you writ.
A sure device to please my wit.
2.
When?
I enjoy the dappling of light
The speaks of clouds and close-capped nights
I enjoy the water, blessing skin
That invites me into magic whens.
I enjoy the semblance of dawn
That first mocked light that lingers on
I enjoy the feathered brush
of fingers which, speaking, say so much.
These, a few of life's rare jewels
given me for joy's renewals.
3.
Written to Hunscher and never sent
Spun thought
Golden threads of light
Revealing mind-borne flight
Into realms of what can be and can be not.
Silken touch
Velvet glances filled with love
Which sharing values prove
To mean so much and more than such.
Cradled forms
Lifted into worlds of wonder
Raised by fantasy to ponder
Intimacy made magic, lightly worn.
Filled with anticipation
I resonate in celebration.
Gladness warmed
4.
In Response to Ayn's artless question
Older than the staff of Time
Older than the deadest crimes
Older, yet than hallowed thought
Older than the shadows caught
In rune-born eddies of life's dawn
Older than sweet Hera's song.
Old before the ancient touch of grace
Left its dew on Eve's embrace.
This, the answer, wrot by me,
given, dear that you might see.
5.
Ted Ditty
The Kaballah speaks with ancient tongue
Of esoteric ransoms won
But in deeds and thoughts now lost in night
The face of God still hides from sight
6.
Magic voles cannot be eat
By any of the cattery.
For the cats, sweet furry things
Have not claws and fangish rings
7.
No such emotions touch my heart
Button pushing my sheer delight
The voles are magic, glad to start
The engine of my smiled sight.
No, the source of this disease
Is someplace else, you merely tease.
8.
Forget Not Yet
Forget not yet that touches burn
And rapture sings from deep in bones
Forget the never found release
Of loving that extinguished peace
Forget the magic of delight
That found, is lost in thin stretched sight?
Forget that laughter fractures ease
That still regard must surely please
My memory might not regard
Tactile pleasing well loved shards
But this I know in measure full
The taste of love can make us whole.
9.
Vestigial thoughts of unseen psalms
Touch us when the nights grow long
Reminding the inner mind of truths
That linger on the words of Ruth
Savants tremble to remain
Alive to what is also sane.
10.
Predator and prey are one
A single flesh, a single thought
Born from pulsing of one sun
They consume in strife and not
The anguished need to live and breed
Granted them and thus time freed.
11.
Passions unacknowleged, strident words and life's fast curves
These, the stuff becoming, in the chuming must occur.
Falling into error lends the life to the bewarer
Holding back from living, yawns the grave of no beginning.
12.
Glances bond us, untouched kiss
Summoning the hope of bliss
Found within another's mind
When they are with us so inclined.
Glances bond us fast in need
This, the life from which we feed.
Candles carry waxen thoughts
that stem the ravishment not sought
Their light affirms our given word
Reflected in those prayers not heard.
13.
I walk in and you walk out,
Early morning, fogged with doubt
Here in haloed screen and toward
The moument of mindful words
You walk out and I walk in
A sad displacment for two friends.
14.
On the Midnight side of life
The roiled ripples tipple tongues
And vanish in the cloudless sight
Of failing dreams not yet begun
On the Midnight side of life
Laughter grows both sharp and quick
That its armoured wall might cancel strife
And deflate our raptures with a prick
Of unreal vanquishment and pride
For in that place the desperate hide.
15.
Little words give light to heart
Love is a nice place to start.
Love blends fractal, scattered schemes
And cherishes the source of dreams.
16,
Cyberhugs are made of light
Transcending time and space and sight
These unexpected, warping motes
Give us laughter, though remote
Along with pause and thought and note
That our emotions can also vote.
17.
The Oldest Dance
Enchanting thoughts of ancient dance
Moving. pulsing, stirring, felt
This the sorrowed, time borne flight
That Circe played while others knelt
Dance remembered, dance improved
Dance resembling our moods
Dance sublime and also mirthed
Falling laughter given birth
This the dance that can't be won
The serious dance that life begun.
18.
DANCING
I dance the dream of time warped flight
And learn the balanced touch of ease
That carries me in motioned thought
To places that I know will please
For dance is balance, body, mind
Joined to capture what is sublime
18.
Arrows flight
I touch the thought of mind's devise
I scamper in uncharted lands
To taste the things not seen with eyes
And walk uncharted, new-made sands
This, the arrow set in flight
That turns back the gloaming night.
19.
Stars that shine with self-made light
Glowing into promised thought
In the mind or in the sky
Still they lend our spirits hope
Candles coddle eyes and ease
Spirits lessons surely please
20.
Interrupted interloper
Riven thought and rightly drained
Poetic intervention that allows me to be sane.
21.
Vanished, gone without a trace
None can find his witty face
They didn't think to check the tub
Where he is lurking, going "glub."
Practicing his scrubbing ways
Hoping to fulfill his days.
22.
Unwoven thought, unmade dreams
Eyes that see too much for peace
child play creates the place, streams
And meadows, beckon ease
Still the mind in sweet unrest
Build a clime of tenderness
From this mote of emptied thought
Dance and so deny you're not
On ships in shadows, bathed in light
Balanced, poised in mind made sight.
23.
The fickle wind flows hot and cold
Raging storm and languid, curling, tickled flow
Of thought warmed air that ebbs and shows
The beasts and humans in its way
The fragile side of life lit days
Replete with promised, fragrant ties
Composed of laughter, hope and lies.
The, the gentling winds of time
Fickle winds, which hold designs.
24.
Live deeply.
Laughing should be as soul searing as tears
and our tears should banish both hope
and untimely surrender to the hazards of life.
Live completely,
touch with your mind all that is.
25.
Written for Ted, March 25, 1999 in response to doggerel he sent. Fun!
It rains, it pours, the sheeting storm
Reproves the fates and I curl, warm,
into the comfort of my bed
This a thing that glads my head.
IQs so low they shock, appall
But turn men off?
No, not at all.
A rare man, yes, wants brains in love
But most, prefer bland, brainless doves
To murmur, yes, and more, and now
Nymphotic fantasies endowed
With sizes "D", and brains well cowed.
26.
Never do I squeeze the fruit
When I shop, and touch and look
I only stroke to judge it ripe
Ready to carry home and bite
27.
Giving is a wondrous thing
Gladness making, slaking, keen
To multiply the joy on Earth
Goddesses gave life through birth.
28.
Nature's Law misunderstood
Cycles, dancing, all are good
Living within vested thought
This, the law, most oft forgot.
29.
You play, and warp in song wrapped thought
This, patinaed, flail you wrought
To idle in the halls of time
Finding raptures, pure, sublime.
30.
Y2k cannot reprove
When your actions must improve.
Knees, remember, hearts take hold
Savor then, this touch of gold.
31.
Boswell, languished, fenced and strode
Among those giants, lightly known
Who spoke the silvered truth of time
Fraught with magic, warping, mined
Through years unfurled into today
With winsome messages delayed.
We see, we touch, yet fail to know
The things that only time can show.
In time all things will be displayed
This the truth that might dismay.
32.
There is no death, no shadowed place,
where, extinguished, souls cannot be traced
By the long, fond folds of tender time,
finding them, in place sublime.
She sheds the certainty of needs
Known and harbored, made her free
To incite new thoughts, new paths of mind
Shattered patterns, build new kinds.
Love remakes us, renewed and whole
And captures every moment, owned
That melts into the promised hopes
Enlarging every part and scope.
33.
Lollipops of sugared thought
Which rapture tongue and havoc wrought
On furnishings, the least sublime
In meltings of the icky kind
Smell of newness, soon worn off
Crisp, taut odor forbidden thoughts
Dustballs in the unplaces move
In eddied currents, which reprove
When play could tease, consume our thoughts
The slightest follies, discovered, taught
The newest naughtiness we learned
To use again, each in our turn.
Licking on the self-same pop
The last lick wins the thinnest drop
34.
Tanya is happy, yes,
Unthreatened by the snarling car
Untroubled by things as they are
Untouched by raptured, Cosmo's dreams
Unrequited, and unseen
Glad to be your closest friend
And know the you that fancy sends
On trips of commentaried thought
Into what is, or is not.
Abra stashes quick killed prey
In the places that dismay
Pouncing on the motes of mind
That reflect your state of mind
Claws, a tremble to taste heat
35.
Spinning words, iconic tunes
Wrought in fractious, mind made runes
Delights which sizzle, light and smile
The sure rewards that must beguile.
Share this pass time, yes we do
Silly savants, telling trues
Makes us merry, makes us laugh
To jiggle, wiggle, tickle, craft
Wording pictures which take flight
To the mind ward sides delights
Words, the symbols, forged by thought
Weave and wander in the mind
Imprinting us, by what we wrought
To passions shallow and sublime.
We share this game, in cyber-time
Linking us through worded signs.
36.
Children's play, a serious thing
Tracing what the world will be
When time, the metronome of age
Informs the child in living's wage
Forever is a long, long view
Moments strung in long lines though
The past to present, future scenes
That when detected are still unseen
The mastodons of ages past
Trampled only when we asked.
Playing, saying, speaking, spoke
This, the fantasy we invoke
But weaving words with tensiled touch
That reprove the premised, crusted thrust
Here the place in cybered thought
Where horns, and thorns and pixies haunt
Shallowed only in the mind
That laps in liquid space sublime
To dance beneath the moon of time
Shatters patterns, stilled in kind.
37.
Tickling is what ticks will do
When squeezed between this one or two
But silent, not the tender tick
Yammers on, complaining quick
Ticking clocks will also toll
When captured by unlikely goals
Waking slumber, minding times
When those encumbered lose their minds
38.
Lust for living , lust for flesh
Lust, the raptured, shattered jest
That steals our sense, our minds and hearts
Preys on sanity, imparts
The Needing, Wanting, Hungered greeds
That empty echo which yearns to feed
On kisses, touches, silken skin,
This, the sheeted game of men.
39.
Bells will toll with endless goals
While skin will tender and extol.
Ears still hear
if minds are clear
40.
Sleep in shadows, nature's toll
For making life your self-same goal
A lust for living can grow thin
When playful follies remake and twinge
41.
I play with you most every night
Giving quickened, epic light
to the source of these poetic flights
Dancing to iconic dreams
That, written, bid delight to tease
Touched with words, I have been, true
Is writing them a task for you?
Words flow and gush and rush from me
Never stopped by thought or grief.
They come, unbidden, night and day
Rapture filling, inviting play
I've written them through all my life
Shadowed shards of love and strife
I live in that electric place
Of words devising, knowing, grace
Deep inside the me of time
I write divining the sublime
Thus, for me its always been
Words, symbolic, collect of when
And where and what I do
Written, summoned here for you.
42.
Embraces lead to those delights
That rapture, join and thus incite
Those thus drawn into the heat
To give themselves up to their needs
Danger lingers in that cusp
For love is binding, seared with lust
Danger languishes, extoles
The banished echoes thus enrolled
Remember this when drawn to touch
And pause before the cost of lust.
43.
April 3
Lust, the primal drive that feeds
Life's continued need to breed
Is out of phase with much we know
That speaks to life of other goals
But love, the spark of human thought
Resides, incites, and cures drought
that need internal, owned and long
That speaks to heart of spirits song.
Blended with remembered heat
Passions that meet al our needs.
44.
Hugging speaks to human needs
To be held close, returned and known
To Mother heart, that made us free
When we felt fragile, lost alone
Hugs remind us, speak in tones
Of arms and warmth that cherish, show
The place in mind we know as home
Reigniting life's first glow
This, the harbor of the hug
Perfect statement of first love.
45.
Acceptance, hugs and searing truth
Reside in us, align our days
Resonate and call us home
From places where our minds have strayed
Home, the always inner peace
That sustains, remains, maintains and keeps
The never thought, abandoned grief
That kills the will and sheers belief.
Hugs that heal, love distilled
Hold our bodies, mend our will.
46.
Dreams
Dreams that drive and bend and make
The world we live in, feelings slake
Dreams that tantalize, revise
The places that we seldom touch
Because we've let ourselves forget
The passages we must regret
Feelings, maps in which we live
Limiting the choices, give
And take, select and know,
The time eternal, chances grow.
47.
Passages through time and place
Define, refine with mind wrought grace
Power's hold on what will be
In the cusp of fate's dark seas.
Did we meet, in body, mind?
Seeking wisdom, ancient source
Did we set this time bent course
To meet again cleansed of remorse?
When Isaiah's spoken voice
Reverberated, shifted course
Choosing one of many paths
Did we know and truly grasp?
Promised place of soul's divining
Visioned first in ages past
One course chosen, hopes resigning
This, the only path at last.
Truth from one within the sight
Of banished rapture, cleansed with light.
48.
Reaching
We reach and stretch again through time,
defining who and what we are
Banished paths we do not walk,
banished thoughts we don't employ.
The dance of life, the soul-joined coils
That bring us joy and sear and roil
The changing, changed, the same removed
And still, for most, leaves nothing proved
The dance, though given to all eyes
Is singular in every guise.
And love and lust, both joined and lone
Remind and ache with need born song.
49.
Dedication
I dedicated thought and touch,
Mind and memory, life and needs
In time past knowing, granted, joined
That all becoming is still just me.
Searching finds what was not lost
Finding binds with wit-born jest
Never count the dear paid cost
The boon, bright chalice of the quest.
What is lost is well repaid
When time, reminds and has its say
Thanks for clearing, knowing words
That never spoken still are heard.
50.
Words ripple, stipple roil weep
inside my mind, enjoined to heed
The raptured messages they bear
Shattering all my despair
Messaged echoes of what I know
When I allow myself to show
The coiled, living, mindmade truths
That subsume my self as living proof
Woods of wonder, warming flowers
That express unrest and joyous hours
Hugs that banish all despair
Worded touched sent with care.
Friends that speak in cyberspace
Telling tales erase all space.
51.
Later in the Day
Laughter scented, winded tones,
that silken silence before the moan
When time, the harbinger of light
loses self in mind-caught flight
Winter closes with a sigh
that leaves untold the reasons why
Idylled magic lives within
the minds of those we know as friends
52.
Plastic candy's nice to chew
when nothing else will really do
Crunchy stuff with no real taste
Give us appetite for haste
Wiggles win attention, teach
What mindward thought are there to reach
Watch the wiggles, enjoy their heat
And ring the bell of times defeat.
As elephants parade and pose
Telling of what no one knows.
53.
We touch the face of God unseen
by forgetting self and space's sheen
That illusion of time's unsaid lies
that knowing only flat denies
That life is woven, time warped in
life is chosen by each again
When the joining thoughts converge
and give the soul the Earthward urge.
Know that all the unmade ages
Link us back to unnamed sages
54.
Tanya touches all she knows
and thus responds to mindward gnosis
The sweet, low hum of distant honing
Possible are not yet showing
This the time of her long awe
Ending when she is less raw.
Stroke with eyes, and mind and this:
The tender yes that speaks of bliss.
55.
Echoes can touch or score and rend
Delight the senses, savage, rage
The difference in the kind and bent
Written on each life made page
Good and evil, merely words
That express subjective, human views
Of forces which play out the chords
Of songs now music in Earth's sinews
From cataclysm, ages long
to minute change in minor cleft
Each weaves in its shard of song
And each then finds its tiny death
Winning is subjective, too.
The only medal's coiled, true
And only Earth, symphonic whole
Remains in place as virtue's goal.
56.
Plastic gives the mind more scope
to manufacture magnitudes and kinds
of things that light the hearts of folks
Whose poverty would else them bind
57.
When leaves fall soundless to the earth
A cat may play and roll and jump
The always of delight's first birth
Makes serious work a sodden lump
58.
Bugs may flee and find resort
But Abra'll eat them in the end
You need not scold or yet exhort
Abra shares with all her friends.
59.
The Inner Friend must always speak
In words that pierce our first beliefs
For fear is just a thought away
from the truth, "Please, not today."
The dead are clothes, we've taken off
And put aside to be recycled
The essential 'they' are not forgot
But mourned, for all the ways beguiled
But all ends are also death
Death are passaged, counted marks
The metronome that counts our breaths
And knows the moment we'll depart
60.
The Health Department, managed thing
That harbored road-killed, savaged death
Is in the past that all time brings
Wide the path and great it's breadth.
Important is a state of mind
Determined by our sated thoughts
Important lists of varied kinds
And tells the watcher what we sought
61.
Unerased the space is cleared
unelected delights the savant ear
New things evade the well-worn pose
That seldom says and hardly knows
Great abundance, reprieves from greed
That can't be sated or taught or freed
Good cheer should be your heart-close friend
Given to you to amend
The trammelled life your soul has lead
Divining paths that can't be tred.
Flesh won't falter, eyes won't close
Until you've done the things you chose.
62.
A short love letter
Bodies cradle worlds entire,
interactive, lit by fire,
burnt through time from ages dead,
Their long becoming still unsaid
Joy is written, rapture sought
That time
might twine
with what was wrought
And that in some dimensioned place
Time might ease and grant us grace.
63. The Endurance of the Dandelion
The dandelion is like the will to be free
It springs up when boots stomp
Ripped from the Earth it replants itself,
mending its injuries without complaint.
Where ever there is light and air and water.
It endures the long ache of oppression
It sucks up the sparest sustenance, refusing to die
It breeds true to its form, rejoicing in the
simple heat of the sun and the touch of air.
Sending out shoots and seeds in joyous abandon.
It refuses death and parades its pride in golden bursts of flower.
It defies the plans of the powerful, asserting its own life as true.
The dandelion is like the will to be free.
Not invited, it takes its place in time and space
Defying destiny it lives on past expectation
The flower of freedom is the dandelion
Because the dandelion chooses for itself.
Choose. Be a Dandelion.
