Poems-of-Yesterday

Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

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Poems from Before the Fall

Echos of broken thoughts, childhood, caught in time.

Poems of Yesterday - Before the Fall

No. 1 - 54

Ode to Identity

I am myself

No image, no reflection, no excuse

I am myself

I live and think and make

Take the day for what it is

Take the night for what it gives

I am myself

Born to be unsure and striving

Born to vanquish dark and lying

Born to cry and suffer pain

Born to live and become sane.

I am myself

Denying nothing I have felt.

(Written in 1984)

From the Shadow of Tomorrow

This narrow room that binds my dreams to sorrow.

And sends their echos down the stream of time.

To catch in all the crannies of tomorrow.

So that I may pay for all my unseen crimes.

And so, accepting each fell day in numbered sequence.

I walk the path I set before myself.

Refusing to hold back the Love that lends it meaning

Or moving to avoid the things I've felt.

For pain is not the deadly end of knowing,

And Love has tempered fate to let me bear,

The agony I hesitate on showing,

As well as all the laughter sheltered there.

I walk alone in evenings broad awakening

To taste the pleasure lying there for the taking.

(Written in high school, 1967)

Time’s Twin Who isn’t Seen

Times twin has shored up shorter lives than mine

Causing them to ripple out in different ways

Where before they echoed on in thoughtless kind

The Twin has multiplied the passing days

For I am not exactly as I was before

The Twin called my attention to the change

Because I had not seen what questing held in store

I could not feel the agony that is not pain

But now I do.

I have looked past the complexities to find

The inner shrine.

(1984)

A Star

I'm walking toward my own fast star of destiny

And shadows echo out of gloom

And brightness beckons me to climb

The lonely mountain

The silence whispers

Peacefully, the moments slip behind

Each foot must place its self

Strongly on the road whose end

I fear to see.

(1968)

A Response to Kipling in Kind

Males are strong and braver than

The female half of species Man

They stand instead of lending feet

To well thought out and tight retreat

Only man will stand in place

Risking death before disgrace

Could it be that in that space

Behind that hard and rugged face

Are gonads, simply out place?

(1982)

Shackling Cold

I have been cold

With the strained and lonely shadows of your words

unsaid.

I have turned away to find the self

I had denied

And left these precious parts of me aside.

So let it pass

For I have come to know it cannot last.

Let tolerence persist

And let me find the strength to not resist

Your hold

Until my love of life turns cold

And the shadows are less bold.

For this is what you are to me

You are myself, my heart, my soul, my smile

in the face of all adversity

And if I could reach out and change this cusp in time

I wouldn't move

And love is thus within me proved.

(1985)

Self-Changing

Patterns in the water changing endlessly as me

Becoming something else and yet the same

Reflecting living's essence I grow strong inside my mind

Rejecting all the visions of myself that others made.

I build upon the central core

The only living me.

I check the hard foundations without end

Reinforcing and refining the one who I would be

By finding out just what it is

That makes this being me.

Living through the anger and remembering the shame

I close on my beginnings and the spaces that remain

And I fight with quiet surity to break each link of chain

That bound me to a past that was the cause of all my pain

And in breaking out of anger and in severing the bonds

I have found that in becoming truly me

I have been freed.

(1985)

A Book Once Read

Will I not be?

When all the pages have been turned

Will the cover close on me?

Is it possible?

Isn't life an endless, twisted path;

For I remember being here before.

My mind has ventured out to touch the truth of it

And tapped the source of knowing with surprise.

So, I accept the interruptions

Find them good.

I will not let them interfere

With the central quest- that is more me

Than my body or my fear.

(1968)

A Freely Given Gift

I will always render you the gift of truth

There is no charge for it.

The cost was paid the day I came to love myself

And to forgive,

The kind of life I've forced myself to live

But truth is not a gift without a cost to you.

I think you'll find

You pay for it each day.

Because you must enlarge on it and give it back

In kind.

(1981)

Pride

Because I'm proud of me

I celebrate

Because the values I reflect in life

Have often led to strife between us two

I mourn for you.

Because the you I see wants complete control of of me.

And none of you you's trust.

The me's to do what's just.

And you know the bottom line?

The me's let you everytime.

(1980)

10.

Do Not Assume

There is no price that virtue will not pay

to encompass the knowledge most assume

And see that knowing held by light of day

Can cancel out the fearful shades of doom.

To know yourself as sovereign is to say

That nothing else has relevance to life

And armed thus nothing in our lives can fray

The constancy to self that cancels strife

For peace is not the absence of all living

The inner strife can focus of just ends

And tempered metal's born from base beginnings

For at that point the journey just begins

To see this vision born of essance makes us real

The sovereign man is not afraid

And on this hardened base our soul is laid.

(1982)

11.

A Moment Lingering in Memory

(When I was living in Rome as a teenager I was almost struck by lighning that came through an arch of the colosseum and hit the ground within 20 feet of me. The image was so compelling I went home and wrote this that night.)

The night rains wet and cold upon my head

The lightning sears the grass blades on the ground

One white-flash-sword days the night

And holds my eyes and heart and scars my memory

There it stands, piled like a devils maze

Ghost silver in the still-born Day.

Curves piled on curves, jagged it lies

A broken hero in the light

While thunder sings its hymn

And Still-born day returns to night.

(1965)

12.

The Distant Blue

You can forget

Distance covers all with shadowed blue

And memory can thus be masked in gentler hues.

The scenes are less distinct

And the words are rearranged

Until their metamorphis eases pain.

This is what you'll see

If this is what you'll have it be.

But if you hanker after change

And dispise the weakness in yourself

That cannot deal with pain -

Then you'll remember.

(1994)

13.

Cycle Accepted

My flesh is grass

It wavers greenly on the undulating hills

And echos down into the canyons.

It's lushness flushes deeper

In along the rivers bank

And winnows out to nothing

On the dusty plains.

Watching as the twilight

flickers through the fields

I see myself part of this whole;

Taking out my life's blood from the grass.

I live prepared to give it back.

(1968)

14.

On Carol’s Dying

Silence holds me close tonight

and echos down in past my bones

Reaching to the inner self

I call my home

This peace, this silence

Stranger now

I welcome back.

The thrashing sorrows have emptied me

I have met death.

Not as before - a distant messanger to someone else.

But something cutting close to self.

I've felt the pall of misery

That pulls the blue skies down.

Sorrows had me by the throat

And pulled me toward the ground.

I've been engulfed in quiet agony

And emptiness;

His chilling hands have clutched at me.

Regretting words that passed my lips

In anger bred.

But most of all

The words of love

Now left unsaid.

But silence breeds it's own release.

My shell-shocked soul has found its peace.

Love walks with me beyond the grave

I judged myself and then forgave.

(1974)

15.

Lonely Moments

If I could lay the lonely moments end on end

And measure out their length in metered time.

The days thus spent in desperate quest

Of meaning might weigh with me less.

But time and truth is only as it is.

And lies cannot deny

The lonely hours sealed behind these eyes.

(1972)

16.

Soaring

To be myself.

To soar on wings of pride and self-esteem.

To leave behind this shell of shattered dreams

To exchange the might-have-beens for

What-will-bes

By becoming with a vengence

Most truly - me.

(1982)

17.

Silent Guns

There's rust-red violence in the sky today

The shadow-mountains lick away at purpling clouds

Excitement rustles in among the trees

And frees the night wind from the day's embrace.

The evening rushes in to mount its guns along the far horizon

Then to shoot the silvered stars into the darkening sky.

And watching this I sit and wonder why

The echoed song of someone's voice

No longer empties out my joy into remorse.

Distance has now killed the blast of sorrows claim

And left my cleansed of feeling that for a while maimed

Then strengthened

Like a vaccination against a worse disease.

Once when the moon dish wandered through the sky

I only thought of him

Now thought is dry

And other thoughts race madly through my mind.

So, like a hundred million other men I wait

The dawn of that unquestioned Sun

That stills the guns

And hovers on the plains of battle

Quiet beneath its wings

Not looking back to lesser fate

But on to that sun-drenched alpine zenith that

I've yet to make.

(1967)

18.

A Day in the Life of....

This day is gray.

It looms leadenly like a down-turned cup

Enclosing me in cold and rain.

It's edge can cut me to the bone

With sickle-cold wind and restless clouds.

I have looked up, now I look down.

To see the earth, refreshed and clean.

The source of life, and all my dreams.

(1968)

19.

Home Remembered

I always knew there'd be no going home.

A person grows past need of things like that.

Yet summers shining promise hit me in the face today

And I knew I needed home past reasoning.

I cry for it, abandoned, frightened, sick

And in my need no answer summons out of sense.

So I need home.

That space where I knew life's own terrors

And all the dark intensity of shapeless fear.

Always in the distant haze it loomed

A promise never reached - but always there.

Harsh and chastening; But always mine.

Now gone.

In one day wrenched from my own soul.

I sit here naked to the world

So friendless and so cold.

(1975)

20.

The Rider

His hooves cut clay.

The animal between my thighs

Echos out into the light of autumn's day.

The horse's stride intensifies

And my body bends

To ease our passage through the wind.

The wind runs fingers through my hair

And the misted morning cleanses me of all my cares.

I have discovered freedom.

The movement of my body has no bounds,

It rejoices in the glory of the power it has found.

All is ease.

The balance has been struck between the two.

The body that is trained

And the knowledge that has congelled inside my brain.

These few minutes have distilled for me

All the things that mind and muscle can be made to be.

(1986)

21.

Even-Call Pause

The quiet melts about my ears

Like waxen candles carried in the night.

And stillness sinks into my soul

And stalks my worries down.

The silence slips softly up about my ears

Tucking in the blanket round my face.

Mystically the darkness shelters all

Arching up protectively across my bed.

Then rest.

Oblivious to outside stimuli

I breath my best.

And curling up into the darkened sheets

I sleep.

(1966)

22.

Solitude

I am alone in this dark water tomb

Enclosed on all sides by hateful walls

I am bound close to my fate

And cannot escape

It's parasite-like grasp

I've been here too long to remember

From where I came

And my one desire is escape

From this shrinking well

Of tearing night

I am being squeezed close

The fire pain comes again. Harder now

I go to death

Or is it something else?

(1966)

23.

All Ends to Glory

I want to see the glory ride again

I want to sense the magic of a morning spell

As power warps its way up glowing

In the silent light of

Earth-fires whispered dawn

All ends to glory.

As the fountain spurts its peeling

Water up into a statue

To the wills of those of power

Joined together for a cause.

To fight for glory.

The blood-red battle calls

to something deep within us all

And the thing responds with fervor

For the love of life, the love of self, and glory.

To leave with glory.

Even as the darkness winds around the head

All other meanings pall

And the single, loving, lasting thought

That sums it up and echos on

To those who know

I lived in glory.

(1966)

24.

A Darkened Cave

If I could just escape into tomorrow

And leave my yesterdays in some dark cave

Not to remember the forge that pound me

Into this piece of leaden stuff

That will not let me reach beyond today

Then I would feel the dawn of all the well-content

And wallow in the fullness of a life not dreamt

And yet, what holds me is the memory of my own clay

My beginnings, locked in me onward from the womb

Will ever overshadow 'til the day they arch across me

As a tomb.

(1967)

25.

An Unimagined Light

Listening, wondering, watching, fear

Steady danger drawing near

Stomach taut with horrors thrust

Day is old with hours rust

Intellect has shrunk behind

Wisdom of another kind

Consciousness returns to show

The light that I had ceased to know.

(1967)

26.

Breath taken Alone

My body seemed to make itself a part

Of all the things that shaped that day for me

Even at this distance I can't say

Where sky began and left my body free

Motion seemed to slow the very hours

And my lungs responded to the change

To swell and take the sweet air into them

To pause to breathe, and pause to live again.

The sun distilled the smells out of the air

And bathed me with perfume of pine and earth

The breezes blew the hair out of my face

And kissed me with the newness of their birth

And looking past the pines above my head

I saw the blue sky mottled white with clouds

Bringing back the things I'd left unsaid

Knowing, that once spoken, where they led.

I let my thoughts evade the central truth

Giving as excuse my ageless youth.

(1980)

27.

Climbing Rainbows

I've stolen back the freedom to climb rainbows

From the jealous god of promises not made

Because I know the cost of it is long since paid

And I could not have my travels once again delayed

So come with me and share the silent smiles

As we go on journeys that can't be marked in miles

(1981)

27.

Climbing Rainbows

I've stolen back the freedom to climb rainbows

From the jealous god of promises not made

Because I know the cost of it is long since paid

And I could not have my travels once again delayed

So come with me and share the silent smiles

As we go on journeys that can't be marked in miles

(1981)

28.

Hesitation

If I can tarry in this lonely portal

Yet one more night

Prehaps I can be saved

But if fortune tells me to bear on

I'll rush to cross my Rubicon.

(1966)

29.

Always Looking

I've spent my life in seeking things

That I have never found

But the looking has been something

That has set me on firm ground

For I now have set my compass

On a very different course

And the values that were foreign then

Have been my guiding force

I saw that all the goodness

That I thought

Was buried in some strange and lonely spot

Existed all the time before my eyes

Behind a face that struggles with its lies.

(1993)

30.

My Lady Love

She waits beside a vast expanse of water

Her hand holds up the light of living day

And never will the justice in Her falter

And never will Her seekers lose their way

For justice is not made in court opinions

And truth is not defended at the polls

As into living rock we drive the pinions

That hold the deathless thoughts that are our goals

Does Justice need the heart of Her defender?

Will Her loving message echo into time?

Will our children's children yet remember

That those who cherish liberty are one kind

Liberty cannot be won - and never lost

Remember what it is and not the cost.

(Written in challenge to a duel of sonnets with Craig Franklin, 1983)

31.

A Sonnet Written in Challenge

She stands beside a darkened mass of sorrow

A distant hope of freedom in our lives

A hope that may be realized tomorrow

If we can only pledge ourselves to strive

That promise has been built into our futures

And forged in blood before our mother's birth

In knowledge that the cost can not be counted

Except by minds that understand it's worth

So watch the Lady with her lamp upholding

Salute her in your mind, if nothing else

For her pledge of hope is given us for molding

And each of us must do it for ourselves

The Lady is a promise we have made

And freedom is the value we must save.

(Written in challenge to a duel of sonnets with Craig Franklin, 1983)

32.

To My Daughter, Carolyn

I love you.

There is no range or boundry to my cherishing.

I love you now, as I did before - and as I will.

Time out of mind

On and never varying.

(1972)

33.

Note of A Political Nature to Chris Hocker

Privily speak I of promises well made

For I would have you know I them remember

For pen to paper thus I put - for so you bade,

And hearing thus your words could I malinger?

You said that you would give me many wonders

For papers writ with wisdom good and clear

That Clark did read to parry many blunders

Of policy when run he did last year.

And murmured you of booklets that you wrote

Designed to teach my candidates of things

That will make them yet less clumsy with the votes

And credit to the cause of freedom bring.

So find the stuff - tout suite, and make it fast!

For I needed it all months ago, you ass!

(1979)

34.

To My Son

The door is open.

And through it walks my son.

Out into the night

Away from me.

(1976)

35.

The Child

He was a child

Loving colors that explode

And holding life in both his hands

Not afraid to lose

What he did not understand.

He was a child

Forcing patterns on the sand

Accepting nothing as it stands

He wants to know the things

That others are afraid to see

He seeks to understand

To be able just to know

Why everything is so.

A quiet child

He feels the power of his mind

Joined like music with his soul

Making beauty out ofthings

That shine with ordinary rings.

A hungry child.

But inside his growing brain

Lives reason - born again

Crystallizing into being

And breaking out of bonds

Cutting through the veil that shrouds

Raising up and blooming out

Not satisfied with what he is today

He will soon become a man.

(1968)

36.

I’ve Always Loved You

It's never been as though I didn't care.

Even when it didn't seem as if I could

I've always tried to do the best for you

And a day has never risen up and fallen down

When hopes for you from me haven't echoed out of mind.

My arms have ached for all the times I haven't held you

My eyes have cried until they throbbed their pain into my head.

I've wondered how you've grown.

And if your friends are nice to you, and you to them.

I'd like to ask if quiet can invade your soul

If you think of things beyond yourself

And days long past next week.

I wish it had been different for us both.

And if all my wishing could have made it so.

I never would have let you go.

(1979)

37.

Question of Identity

I am the cusp

I am the storm

I am the darkness of the night

I come as shadow

Cling with murmurs

Leave in newborn light

Not a presence

But an absence felt

Too often let remain

My flesh engulfs you

Laces through you

Twining into you with pain

Often known but never spoken

Feared, denied, and then locked out

Keys and tears will never hold me

There can be no Redoubt.

My name forbidden

Will stay hidden

As echos down a hall

Seeping even creeping

My very mention is your pall.

Some embrace me as a lover

Fearing more to live without

To those I cleave with ardor

Their craven fear has

Locked life out.

(1967)

38.

Triumph

I want to laugh and dance and cry and sing.

I want to let the feeling

Building up inside my frame

Pour out to form

A silver fall of shining rain.

I am gladness

I am the effervescent bubbles in champagne

I am every man who cried to find release

From ecstasy so great it left no peace.

(1978 - For LP ballot drive.)

39.

Frozen Moment

Despot sun reigns over tide.

Small fish duck under rocks to hide

Fire falls hungry to the earth.

The foam is valued at its worth.

Wind strike screams at top of lungs

Flashing off their soundless guns

Quiet lover laughs at wind

Changing what he wants to bend.

Silver gilt on small fish shines.

Wanting what they left behind.

Fearing yet to hold again.

Frightened even to begin.

(1966)

40.

Benediction

I wait for autumn every year.

Eager as a lover is

To taste the beauty of her lips.

For I remember wind through

Falling leaves and a sudden touch of winter chills.

I love the morning air that never quite gives way

To the warmer haze that plaqued me of a summer's day.

I walk through conscious every day

Of fulfillment spelled so many ways.

And when sated with sensation I turn and see

The symbols autumn yearly writes anew for me.

The harvest, earned and taken from the earth;

The sweat turned into living proof that labor is the source of worth

Creation, mind, and value’s birth.

I breath it in and relish all.

The fall of leaves to me becomes

The laurel of a battle fought, and bravely, won.

(1985)

41.

The Dragon

The dragon does not see the far horizon

He lives to suck to yolk out of the egg

And though widely spread is he in all his powers

Narrow is the path before him laid.

He finds echos in the lower planes of battle

And does not see the stars above his head.

For all his force is given to his proving

And for that end his kind is finely bred.

So find yourself emblazoned as the lion.

The dragons badge of honor can't refuse

As sinews twist and strain affirm you victor

The dragons stealth denys that he can lose.

Knowing self endows the age-old shield

Knowing dragon-self you needn't yield

(1980)

42.

Dragon’s World

Dragons are escaped from this world

Of things that wax material in the light

They have retreated into sleepless waiting

To bring their winged shadows back from night

They wait to see a turn from things electric

To values lit by waxen candles glow

And do you now wait also for their coming?

And do you seek the mysteries that they know?

(1980)

43.

A Cry from the Darkness of Time

I loved you thus before the dark unwinding

Of time had rendered up the message of Your birth

And thus before my heart had quit its beating

I saw in you the Savior of the Earth.

And so I bound myself for time uncounted.

To give You all the strength that I possess

The little Babe who laid in home-spun weaving

Taught me to understand my soul is blessed.

And in giving up the Self I thought was me

I found that in exchange that I was free.

(1967)

44.

Poppies

Red flowers clash hard with green grass

Brass poppies grow

Row on row

Crying over sun-death

Laughing at the moon-tide

Whipping nerves of men to hide the name

Bright, innocent they are

Bringing evil to the bar.

All innocent.

(1968)

45.

Natal Wishes

I wish you pleasure in the everyday

Occurances that fill your life

And the perpetual newness of things often tasted

as well as those untouched.

May you grow to fulfill your capacity for loving

And in the growing come to know yourself completely

(1986)

46.

I Am The Wind

I would soar lightly in among the clouds

Letting the carressing wind

cleanse my skin

I am one with this

I am the wind

Bending all and stretching thin

Suspended in a timeless breath of finely stretched intensity

I am the clouds

That look up

In thunderheads of power

Rolling past plains and valleys

Radiating out their blinding strikes of light

Dissolving self back into rain

In cycles unattached to pain.

And I am man

Who sees all with eyes that

Measure time in miles

And journies in transcendent memories

I have learned to see and feel and think and be.

Past singularity

To Self

And I am wind, and rain and clouds.

Encompassed; all; and without doubt.

(1969)

47.

Close Friend

To you who touch my quiet core of being

And understand the echos from my soul

With eyes that speak to me and let me grow

You stand with me and know I'll love you always

That the bond we've forged between us served to share

The strength of each when one is grieved or lonely

And would retreat into himself in grave dispair.

Let this mark its memory on you

Love binds us, makes us one instead of two.

(1985)

48.

Leaves of Death

My address book holds leaves of death

Names made dust

Memories that live in thoughts grown fainter by the day

The ink is fading

Becoming musty blue from vibrant black

My eyes release them from the page to wander in my memory

Carol's electric blue glance pierce the years

Her laughter, harsh and unforgiving, echos in my ears

I see my mother

reaching out to touch me; wishing there was strength to love

When she feared to even live

Bob

A country western hero

Riding the mustang of honor to

MacDonalds for a Big Mac

No bluster, no pretense, no cynic

Just love, ready to give the substance of yourself

without question.

Stan is there

Alive with hopes and dreams of times that

Slipped through his fingers

Never tasted, never broached

A ephemeral wonder

And Phil

Who lived within the circle of the world

as he knew it

Never afraid

Respectful of justice and honor

Doing right with an automatic grace

Father

Your eyes revealed the child

That your life was bent to hide

You were a gentle soul

Stalwart in purpose

Passionate for truth

A quiet lover of the small gestures that matter

Anne

Your call tolled death, time and time again

That was the most I had of you

Death and death until the end.

You danced into the light

winding ribbons, pink and blue, as your spirit left my sight

In death I was not sister but your friend.

The passing years have taken them

enveloped in the darkness eyes don’t pierce

Hands don’t touch.

Taken and still here,

fading blue, untouchable, but touched.

(Written for those I loved who had died. 1995)

Added: January 14, 2012

Cap, I always called you, Charles never was your name

To me, an older brother who had bought into the game.

The laughter and the sadness of you - grasping what could never be

Taught me much about the box containing misery.

I miss your wicked humor, I missed it while you lived

Wondered at your blindness, too, you had much more to give.

I forgive what happened, understanding as I do.

The grievous inner struggles you were unable to subdue.

Find peace in Light, your healing, forgive yourself and so renew.

For my brother, Charles Arthur Pillsbury, who I dearly loved.

49.

Truth & Conscience

Time has swallowed lives without a ripple

Leaving only emptiness and fear

Time can touch you only it you tremble

To lose what is not yours to take from here.

We breath to live and love and eat and wonder

We struggle to unlock the unknown truth

Taking as a given time will sunder

The search that must begin in our first youth

Retreat into oblivion if you must

Life is what we have - and it is just.

(1996)

50.

A Short Commentary on the Justice of Nature

Nature is becoming

Never finished; never perfect; never wrong.

The Earth breathed fire

Water sizzled

Steam arose

The crusted, tortured, new-born skin

Crackled, folded, sulked and cooled

Water fell, trickled, flooded

Seas grew, a droplet at a time

One joining one unnumbered and unknown

The Earth Breathed, steady and slow

Wind waxed and stippled water, turned stone to sand

No movement, but light became life

The Earth Breathed

Slow, regular and steady

They came from the nothing

That is the Breath

of Earth

Filling Sea;

Cloaking Land

Colors crowding the mountains, touching the plains

A multitude of living things

Breeding, fighting, birthing, dying

And then gone, forgotten

Bones yellow and breaking into dust

Some fraction impressed in stone

Most erased without a trace

The Earth Breathed on.

Each life mingling in what was

For just a tiny fraction of a moment

A blink of eternity in

Their Long Forever

Mountains stretching tall

Recede and fall

Earth’s face changed and yet the same

The Earth breathed on, steady and strong

The threads of life reach forward into time

As life remakes itself, struggling to survive

Straining muscle, testing will, changing and changed

Time is long, and life short

And always, as the struggle wages war, winning, waning and worn

the Earth breathes on.

(Written in 1996)

51.

Birth Song

Buried in grief

Shackled and owned

For slowly bleeding

Generations

Uncounted and unknown

Now.

Emerging

Into Light

Gaining Sight

Hungry for

Possibilities

Untasted and untried

No longer cramped, Restricted

Deformed and bound

Life inflicted

Face forced down

The Woman Dreams

A life distinct

Her life her own -

With all lives linked

Released from Pain

head upraised

Hands unclenched

Child regained

Future bought

With Truth Rethought

Eyes that see

Air to breathe

Lungs that fill

With Sacred Will Stretching, testing

Knowing, making

The Goddess waking

Joyous, still.

Hands caress

Lips poised to bless

Mother & Earth:

The Spirit’s Birth

(1997 - for the Women’s Box project)

52.

Time’s hands

(Written in the lost hour of October 26 - 27, 1996)

Turn back the clock of minutes, days

Turn it back and let me gaze

On those I loved another time

Let my grieving ease their minds

Harsh and glaring my reprieve

Locked and failing my disease

Turn back the hands of guiltless time

Turn back the clock to seal my crimes

Committed in that shadowed place

Where memories reside with grace

That I have loved is not enough

What I have learned become reproof

Times hands are just and live with me

Slow cadenced metronome of banished dreams

Clamors to remind my heart

That no one ever really parts

Death; illusioned judgment gives

The Soul, the Self can’t cease to live.

September 28, 1998 10:43 p.m.

53.

Dedicated to Craig Franklin and Morgan Pillsbury

- Two unsouled beings trapped in Self

I have been ground and milled out fine

For the least of my unmentioned crimes

For I refused to see the truth

And this crime stole all of my youth

I’ve been smashed and ripped apart

The substance fractured in my heart

Because I would not see the light

My soul was banished into night

I have lost all I worked to make

And ventured for my children’s sake

Punished for what I would not see

The ugliness engulfing me.

I found a home in his embrace

A sheltered place of measured grace

He battered my illusions then

He I thought an honorable man.

With nothing left inside of me

Empty, echoed, ravished, grieved

I stood up on my feet again

Felt life’s breath and said, amen.

54.

Anger drains away

Acknowledged, owned and known

Boil bursting

Easing hurting

Throbbing cools

peace renewal

Anger gives us self to learn

I use anger, fear and pain

To pinpoint needed change

Body wisdom

Spirit mind

show me where to use my time

Giving birth to Shadows death

I flow with peace and grace at last

it was an explosion of pain

The pain owned me and

I was consumed in it.

“Jimmy was good.”

Hour after hour a small girl cried

Aloud, denying, lies and holding

“Jimmy was good, Jimmy was good”

“Jimmy was good, good good.”

(Written for Women Together at the Unitarian Society. Reflecting remembrance of a traumatic childhood event.)