Out

Like when I was a child
looking at the ceilings
upside down,

I still invert what’s above
to challenge the limits
of ground and touch.

Now I’m venturing
beyond the sky,
following the path
of clouds…

I wonder if I’ve always been searching
for a way
out.

Poem and image ©LauraDenise

Scrapbooking

Split-rail fences,
wildflowers,
clouds and moon,
and golden hours,

cuddly pets,
pajama days,
all things cinnamon,
autumn ablaze,

friends’ hugs,
hugs in general,
generations working
on jigsaw puzzle,

chai latte,
tea in fancy china,
every sunrise,
29:11 of Jeremiah,

daughter blossoming
and other such miracles,
like the way You show me
Your love, unconditional…

these but a few
of my favorite things
I fill my album
with to keep
the good in me
to offset the pain
until I finally find
my way home again.

Seasons

Seasons about,
seasons within,
seasons of life,
seasons begin.

All seasons end.

This brings about what pleases
and that which disappoints,
that which shatters
and that which fills with joy,

but who are we to judge
what’s in our best interest
from our non-omniscient,
limited perspective?

Who is the narrator?
Who is the character?
Who is the author?
Who will read it

in the end?

Dusty cover,
spring breeze,
dust to dust,
seasons never cease.

I resist the gales of change
even though I’ve grown wings;
sometimes our comfy cocoons
are stirred on purpose
by the leaf.

Premature nostalgia
begins to take hold;
I try to focus on the excitement
of what He has in store.

Seasons never cease.
“Nothing gold can stay,”
but it returns so loyally,
and in its absence regrows

faith.

I will harvest the gold
in the center
as the petals unfurl,
life within life…
keeping or returning to
the purity and light,

I believe,

is the eternal goal.

Poem and image ©LauraDenise

Following Flowers

I am fueled by storms
and coastal wind
as I raise my arms to each
and channel them
until empowerment rises
boldly from within…

But it is in the still
and minute,
in the soft scent
of beautiful,
in the trust of subtle,
the barely discernible,
that I feel the forgotten
soothed,
those buried-alive
non-truths;
the golden elixir single ray
finding the torn petal
coats in those places
I am not able to ever reach
on my own.

Up close and personal
is the only way I know
to heal my heart,
to feed my soul,
and that, I believe,
is the path that leads
home.

Poem and images ©LauraDenise

Symbols in the Sand

A detour, soulful tugging,
I find myself impulsively
knelt again on the white sands
before the altar at an end
of the earth,
surf symphony
rising predictably
to greet me,
but I casually look about
for the signs He wanted me
to again come ’round…
between my toes
ancient mountains ground
to grains,
quartz granules,
sugar-soft,
appropriate backdrop
for the hieroglyph
written for me:
it freezes me.

So easily,
I succumb
to the enchantment
of silence,
save for those waves
and occasional sea birds
with personal messages calling.
(It always baffles me
how I can so often have
this parcel of paradise
to myself…)
I stay a long, unhurried while
just trying to feel
what this enigmatic swirl
of sea oat in the sand
is all about…
Something about curves
is always so sensuous,
aesthetically strokes
my soul…
I don’t need a translation;
in fact, I prefer
this sacredly-carved symbol.
I make it my own
and add it to my collection
of clues
leading me leisurely
home.
It is the journey
after all, and I have nowhere else
to go.

Poem and images ©LauraDenise

Shifting

shifting sands
grains unable to be grasped
slipping through fingers
sieve of my existence
footprints vanishing
in vain trying to leave
an imprint, fingerprints
fossilizing

as I watch
sea drops dry on shells
shells of mankind
displayed non-selves
on shelves

shifting painted shapes
offer to take me away
only to lead to the next
drifting cumulous cloud
lateral when I need
to be higher
homeward bound

shifting sands
I open my hand
spread my fingers wider
I know what the answers
are not
to feel the silk
is to feel
nothing caught
but sensory strokes
the void
in the curve
of my palm
no trail found
to my entrance
into the sea

saltwater can’t sting
when the wounds
are too far beneath
the body’s surface

arms open
I invite
the above in
home-
sick
let me know
I am not

forgotten

Soaring Petals

I’ve always had wings
but longed for roots,
to feel snugly attached
in between passionate pursuits

of wild dreams
ablaze in color,
to pass through rainbows
while feeling home-tethered,

exposing the golden center
of a soul winged
but also resting
in love’s nest,
sweet tender cradling.

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.

Gardens Along The Way

Raindrops cling
to Japanese Maple;
Time suspends them
to give way to
Stillness’s held breath…
subtly exhaled
as I pass, as if I were a
royal angel.

Bare feet upon
the cool, smooth stones,
into another potential
garden of myself,
I enter alone,
a blossoming bud
incongruous
with the shibui growth;
humbly, I pause
to reflect,
but recognize this is also not
my home.

I continue on
in the directional tug of
my soul.

Window Shells

Out of body, I float through time,
hover unaccompanied, no ghost as guide;
nonetheless, through windows I peer,
Dickens-paned, layered veneers.

Yet in them, in those moments,
the mise-en-scènes are still amiss–
a faraway look, a laugh insincere,
a single, silent unwitnessed tear–

not necessarily sad, just adrift;
have I never settled into my prints?
My soul, a gypsy, but wishing to barter–
tent for cabin, canoe for harbor.

My life does not flash before my eyes,
for this person, I barely recognize;
experiences play out, acts with multitudes of ends,
the quilt more mishappen-patched than threaded.

So many past lives I’ve lived and died within this one,
so many false dawns that made me suspect the sun,
yet through it all, in this saga of my non-selves,
I walk the beaches of my past and collect the treasures

beneath and between the shells

and place them on the sunny sills of my present,
the true dawn of the genesis of me
that began when you kissed me into living
and finally led me home into my awaited dreams.