Poet. Writer. Photographer.
When the hurt floods in
and your traumas
drain your green
and starve to death
your newly-sprouted dream,
when the cobwebs reappear
and re-chain you
to faulty self-beliefs,
when you bow your head
and turn with shame from me,
know that I
will always remain
to break the cycle
of love leaving you again.
I will lend my green
and yellow and light,
and whisper that I love you
still and more and despite
like you have done for me
in this beautiful, mutual growing
of self-love.
Some were built for height,
some false with imitation bark,
some ill-fated by others’ fires,
some have witnessed the sparks.
The dark, the light,
rotates and falls
upon each equally.
Some were meant to
sky-reach.
Some use the sun’s love
to bloom in delicate
and fleeting beauty.
At the feet of giant trees,
with whom I have always
felt most rooted,
in white lace and ray’s kiss
still fresh on my crown,
I have never been so at peace
with who I’ve found
I’ve always been.
Wherever I go now,
it is me who I am.
Poem and image ©LauraDenise
Don’t think my sunny outlook
comes from a lifetime of easy;
I’ve walked through the dark wood
and from depression’s cliff,
still find myself sometimes clinging.
I’ve cried my share of flash floods,
drowned several lives in the deep,
survived decades of verbal abuse,
spent my time vowed and banded to Lonely.
I’ve been there and back,
having spent most of my life there,
but through it all, I kept the marker on
where my dreams were buried,
inside a humble chest
beneath the patch of wildflowers;
I watched the live hues grow
as the turpentine slowly stripped
my own colors.
But the spirit, like pain, is buried deep,
like music in the heart, cannot be reaped
by any other, and perhaps the tears
upon those wounds are the rain needed
to combine with the light of the soul
in that long, desolate season,
and we finally figure out
how to use that manure
to fertilize our strength and desire,
and the sprouts from within
finally catch fire
and rise up to inspire,
and the wildflowers burst
from that buried chest,
breaking the lock
from the inside, having had
enough of that old
non-life.
So when I see all that I now see in each bloom,
know I, too, like you,
am the seed, the petals, the stem, the story,
the roots.
Poem and image ©LauraDenise
Heart-sensors
extra sensitive,
picking up mixed signals
of every human emotion,
eyes brim with
unidentified sadness
but do not spill over,
for tears that mix
simultaneously with
happiness
get recalled to the cauldron
to start over
in the feelings-concoction,
stirred not by hand
but all that I am,
have been through,
have yet to see,
and the substance
that holds it
all together
in the center
comes from the faith
I feel
He has
in me.
I am transforming
into exactly who
I was always
going to
be,
still a mystery
to me.
Lord, keep making me
an instrument
of Your peace.
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, the truth;
Where there is doubt, the faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
In the silence,
blooms slowly awaken
from deep sleep,
each petal
fading
in to life,
colored gradually
by individual rays
of soft, natural light.
I wait in line.
The peace
already
activating me
inside,
a hymnal hum
with lost lyrics
returning to mind.
Here comes my
light…
I am ready.
Old me,
goodbye.
Evolution of soul
transforms me,
an elevation
to a higher
height.
Laura Denise 