Barricades and Gates

Don’t count the days
you’ve been apart
or all the fissures
that keep forming
in your heart.

Don’t count at all
except to count on the reunion.
Sometimes it’s necessary
to future-focus in those moments.

Close your eyes
and let that vision in;
the light of faith
makes the best stitches.

Stop red-exing. Green circle
all the days left in this life.
Keep hope open and
into each moment invited.

Don’t count the tears that drop
in the seemingly endless flood.
Count on His greater plan.
Lift your face to the Son.

Pray for the courage to take the wheel
as the angels give directions.
Sometimes we have to wait longer;
sometimes we need to take action.

Sometimes it’s up to them;
sometimes it’s not determined by fate
but by every action
we don’t and do make.

Dead ends are the Devil.
Detours, angel interventions.
The first, avalanches suffocating.
The latter, breathways to salvation.

Poem and images ©LauraDenise

Hope Is A Red Balloon (With Audio)

Hope is a red balloon.
To dream is to release,
To let the heart again believe:
Benediction granted wings.

Hope is a red balloon.
To fear is to release.
Self-shackling to the ribbon needed
For freedom to be achieved.

Hope is a red balloon.
But with passenger and knapsack attached,
It becomes the passageway
Between spirit-death and life hatched.

Hope is a red balloon
That may burst at any moment
Over deep, dark uncharted waters
With drowning a likely occurrence.

Hope is a red balloon.
Faith is to ride it into the winds
Knowing the trajectory
Is calculated and adjusted
by Him,

Delivering to safety,
Granting the dream.
Because you held fast
To Hope’s string.

Poem and image and recitation ©LauraDenise

Release Me

How many stories
can there be in petals?

How long can I remain
unfound in the meadow?

How can the same patch of land
be so ever-changing?

How many more potential bad days
can Mother Nature keep preventing?

How is it that I am the only one bearing witness
to so much magic on a daily basis?

How much longer can the toad’s eye keep me entranced?
And the intricate details in the anatomy of insects?

How much time has passed in that outside world
while I sit among the birds and squirrels?

How is it that nonhuman friends have become so underrated?
And introverts given such a hard time for avoiding socialization?

My colleagues are ordering their second round of drinks.
I confirm with the waiter, “Just water for me.”
Torturous are the hours I prove I’m not an island!
(What’s a few white lies to protect my safe-haven?)

A dragonfly stops by to wink at me,
shows off how he can fly away so freely into the breeze…

The conversation continues. I do not join in.
Release me back into the wild where I fit in…

Poem and images ©LauraDenise

Light Bulb

In lieu of petals,
on a barren stem,
a bud of light
hatches open.

The message clear:
it’s all a bit more than
a matter of perspective.

You can focus on the loss
or fill it in.

One comes from stagnancy,
the other action.

We can do so much more
with what we are given.

Chambers

Some chambers
of the heart
cannot be revived,
but somehow, in time,
the others manage
to thrive,
filling in with extra
color and light,
like fall delicately
preserved despite
the returning of spring,
some things
simply adapt inside,
like a damaged heart
that syncs
to another’s beat,
incapable of replacing
or restoring that part
but giving new life
to a deserved and beautiful
heart.

Sometimes The Heavens

Sometimes the heavens
seem to shout
without a sound,
send in golden tsunamis
to knock us out
of our sacrilegious head-bows,
hunched over the false light,
oblivious to whom is beside
let alone above.
Another tidal wave of wonder
crashes against an overpopulated shore
unheard and unseen
despite its colossal reminder
that we were not meant to be
islands caught up in the streams
on screens
of mind-numbing nonsense when
the caged spirits within
continue their deafening
pleases turned to pleas and
silent screams
to be released.
Our souls see
heaven’s reach,
but our eyes and minds
are locked
in self-imposed
escapism stagnancy.
And another stair to heaven
disappears, as the case
little by little,
shrinks.

Spring Frosting

Frosted silver-blue in spring
ushers in eucalyptus dreams.
I inhale the heavenly possibilities
wafted through my senses
and altering my inner being,
frosting me with the sweet
scents of what can be
and what can never be lost,
centuries of hope long ago
and perpetually seeded
that spring up each annual season
despite the body’s expiration
sacrificed for the birthing
of eternal angel wings.
Every heart’s whisper,
every tear that ever watered,
becomes a part of me,
as I am a part of each,
all of us connected,
evidenced in these
ambrosial eucalyptus
leaves.

Return Me

Moonrise, ocean waves,
lull me awake;
wash over me
your indigo dreamscapes.

Ankle deep, the magic waters seep
up into the inner streams
of my being,
flush out the day’s impurities
until I’m cleansed of the trivial
that tries to cling.

Moonrise, ocean waves,
take me farther away:
return my form
for an hour
to mermaid.

Poem and image ©LauraDenise

Concrete Canvas

Concrete cannot barricade
my imagination from its escape;
especially on rainy days,
I paint with puddles
like Van Gogh and Monet –
bright colors, ocean waves,
always naturescapes,
to keep from drowning
in the daily mundane.

Concrete cannot barricade
dreams that refuse to fade to gray.

Tea With Honey Bee

Few things do I find
more peaceful
than the golden hours
I make and spend
with non-people
in those euphoric moments
I string together
between the shadows,
sitting among the bees
in neither garden
nor bramble,
a weedy yard
as proxy for the meadow
I have yet to discover
as my special
place to feel
home.

In the meantime,
longer still,
will I spend
unweaving the web
to the portal.

I watch in comforting
company each
peculiar movement
of a single honey bee
again in the perfect
light, so celestial.

I bet he’s seen
my meadow.

I strain to hear
the whispers,
the clues,
as I always do,
and add them to
my map
home.

I take into my essence
the message
of a single bee
teetering
on the webbed edge
of the dark and deep,
and I remember,
too late or in perfect timing,
that I also have and always have had
wings.

Perhaps this whole map thing
is what deceives,
keeps us stagnant
with the planning
when we simply
need to faithfully begin
the journey,
all of it too fleeting
to waste another moment
not believing
we can achieve
right now
our dreams.

We are never truly defeated,
jilted, ill-fated,
except by ourselves
when we lie down
too long
where we don’t belong,
succumbing to the sunset song of the poppies
when the field of sunny, new-day daisies
is just up ahead.

I never heard a buzz from that bee.
Funny how later and always, I will remember
the way it pollinated
these dreams.