Sandra's Verse

Let it rip
Let it spread
Let it overflow
You can still breathe
It’s not oxygen
It’s tiny bubbles of strength
A bit of hope
A healthy dose of pure good will
Traces of spirit essence

Just a few breathes
There

>1 SandraArdnas: That's lovely, Sandra! And lord only knows we need this reminder, to still breathe in (and out) some pure good will.

May I add this topic link to our original poetry creator's list (it's below the roster)?

>2 DebiCates: Of course

>1 SandraArdnas: This is intriguing, I'd like to hear more. :)

>4 TonjaE: Not sure what to say, apart from it being about the resilience of human spirit, even when the odds against are stacked so high you feel you can't breathe and you'll surely drown on land :)

Unheard

Listen
The thunder echoes
the mountain’s plea
It speaks of worlds
Mired in coal
Indifferent
Oblivious
Entrenched in ways
only stone hears

Listen
The river weaves
the story of time
of lives gone by
of true mind’s course
Sage
Unrelenting
murmur of water
through the veins of the world

Have you heard
the birds chirp hope
the spring spirit’s song
the hoot of an owl

Have you been listening at all?

The story is long
Dreamwork entwined
It speaks of love
sorrow
and loss
but that is not all
If only you’d listen

Eyes may deceive you
that a mountain is rock
that a river just flows
that puddles are gone with the first sun

But if you listen
It speaks a language
Long-lost yet here
Perfectly clear
Wordless but rich in its own sound

Haven’t I told you
that stars have taught me
how to run blindfolded
and still know the way
how to speak cat
and what is my style of whirling around

What if I told you
you were born knowing
right from the wrong
how to grow love
and what is the thing
to make universe smile

Would you believe me
you need no guide
to travel the distance
from you to I
It’s in the try
From eye to eye

Have you been listening to any of this at all?

Would you, please, just listen
to that slight shiver down your spine
when the Moon eclipses the Sun
the awe before Sun’s magnificent return
the lasting change this brought about

If only you listen

>6 SandraArdnas: I love this Sandra, it's beautiful!

I believe you.

>7 TonjaE: Thank you, I'm glad it resonates. I picked what I considered the most relatable for starters

>6 SandraArdnas: I love that you have so beautifully and profoundly focused on sounds when, in poetry and everywhere else, we tend to focus on sights. Is it winter (Happy Solstice Day) where you are? I ask because I believe we likely pay more attention to sounds in winter. I suppose that makes sense since we are not so distracted by the colors of the other seasons.

In truth, though, you have written a poem that inspires and transports one to "listen" to the eternal now, done so inspirationally. Thank you for sharing it with us.

>9 DebiCates: It's winter, but it is an old poem. Haven't written any in a long while. There's only one relatively recent which seems stuck halfway through, haha. I should probably read it every so often if I'm ever to get inspired to make it whole.

Keepsake

If ever I run
Out of stolen time
Will it count against me
Will it lift the veil
Will it return
to its rightful owner
Or will it
Explode in fireworks
Whose shimmer will trace the outline of my hand

It is by night that I see
It is my skin that can hear
It is the afterhour
It is is near
It is my will
That hollow will no longer exist

>10 SandraArdnas: Oh gosh, it does seem a shame that your amazing talent is on pause. Anytime you feel like sharing an old (or new) poem, I hope you'll do it here.

>11 SandraArdnas: And voila! You've shared another poem. :)

I'm not entirely sure I have the meaning, but I feel a last rejoicing, a last theft, and then, last stanza an ultimately willed, natural disappearing. As is right.

Your poems do generate some good contemplations about the nature of our being.

Not long ago a friend shared a sobering thought: we are only truly meaningfully to two generations down. So in your poem, my own feeling is the ones who knew us while we were alive will feel first the explosion, then the shimmer of our hand. Then it is our will (the will that cannot be otherwise) we leave only a hollow space. Then...even less.

Granted, I could be entirely wrong about your excellent poem. Please forgive me if I am. (Yikes, is it bad form to discuss a poem with the poet?!)

>13 DebiCates: 'Hollow' is my intertextual playful homage to Eliot's Hollow Men, but it isn't necessary to be familiar with it IMO since it's evocative of similar things on its own. It's just that in my mind some words and images bring with them an even weightier and more nuanced meaning by association with some poem, artwork or what have you. So basically, if there's one thing my will is bent on it is to eradicate 'hollowness'.

This poet welcomes any meaningful feedback :D Since I write in English, I have trouble finding it in my immediate surroundings. Those who speak English well are not into poetry and vice versa. So thank you.

>14 SandraArdnas: Whew. I'm glad it's okay and maybe even an opportunity you don't normally have.

Already your comment has been helpful and revealing.

I read the meaning of that last line in an incorrect way, somehow twisted it to mean the opposite. I thought "that" was "that hollow," making it a willed fate that even the trace of the outline of narrator's hand--the hollow--to even disappear. But read with the line before (as you intended), the will is to make sure "the hollow will no longer exist" in a positive aspect, there will remain something, not just a hollow.

It changes everything! ha. I'm glad I asked. I like this revised reading even better.

>6 SandraArdnas: Sandra, both of these poems are beautiful, and "Unheard" resonates so deeply with me, especially at this time of year. Certain things that we were invited to listen to, such as "murmur of water/through the veins of the world" gave me chills. Thank you so much for sharing these. Janelle

>16 JanelleDV: Thank you, I'm so glad my sort of ode to nature and our inextricable links to it is relatable. I started with a few images how our paying close attention to it affects us, but from there it got a life of its own and went into how it is essential to know ourselves, not just nature as such.

Color Me Orange

It’s in the blood
That hunger to love
That taste for the odd
That thirst for the bold

There’s no shaking off
The orange-blood code
Embrace it

Out in the cold
Tell-tale signs abound
Flickers grown into fires
A shower of long expected rain
A smile
A spark in the eye
A rainbow over the sea

There might be a blight
But color me orange
And it doesn’t run as deep
Speak the words to live by
To unscar a few

It’s in the blood
The drive to heal
The urge to touch
The power to rekindle

There’s no denying
The truths of the old
Own it

Down by the river
It all comes together
The passion of the few
Meaning beyond words
A kindness
Wisdom shared
New leaves sprouting on a dead tree

There might be bleakness
But I color you orange
And it will pierce the gloom
I pledge the eternal vow
It unscars me

Tried and tested
Fought and wrestled
It remains plain as plain can be
It’s another sun
Shining through the orange-blood
With spring long overdue

I love all of these - assertive and like the sounds of water running over stones. some terrible bias against punctuation? (observation - not criticism)

>19 bookstopshere: Ha, indeed. I was certain there's an occasional comma, but there's not a single one in these.