Sometimes

 This post is a piece I wrote this summer, a sort of ode to quiet moments and pleasant solitude. Enjoy and happy New Year to all of you!

Sometimes,

I wish I could disappear into the purple-blue ashy summer twilight sky

Become a part of that big aching aliveness

Just be pure color, pure emotion

Never have to exist

Go through the effort of living, breathing, experiencing

Sometimes I wish I could just see.

See and feel but never do.

Sometimes, I wish I was invisible.

Because then I could just watch this wonderful wild fascinating world

Sometimes I like to listen to the music of my mother’s voice

chatting with my father in the front seat of the car

Sometimes I like it when they forget I am there, and

 I can just hear the soft lilt of their conversation wash over me

Sometimes I want to become nothing,

Because then I would be a part of everything

Sometimes I feel very small and insignificant and quiet

And sometimes I do not want to speak.

It is a wonderful feeling,

 When I am so wide-eyed and slender and unknown.

When my voice is only in my head, when I can talk only to me and  no one will hear me

Sometimes I like to be by myself,

To walk along the street and dip into the little shops and look at the earrings on the rack

And then to keep going if I wish, or stay

And listen to the women talk about the colors that accent their eyes

And the children about the kind of ice cream cones they want.

Sometimes I like to be silent, 

And relinquish myself

Sometimes I like to be just a little animal

Simple and happy.

I can feel it all then,

The whole kaleidoscope of humanity.

Sometimes I like that feeling,

That completeness.

It makes me want to  disappear into the ashy blue summer  twilight sky

It makes me want to give myself up.

The Girl in the Valley

There is a valley where the light is thick and golden, and it paints things soft and shining, like Midas’ touch.   In this valley they grow wine, and grapes cling to the branches in abundant bunches; lazy horses nibble the grass, their tails swinging gently.  In this valley the vineyards are laid out neat as a child’s train tracks, like a giant patchwork blanket.  It is called the Valley of the Moon.

 To this valley, a girl comes. She comes to escape the harsh loud world beyond the valley.  A strong, brave girl. But she is no Amazon, for her strength is cloaked in vulnerability. This girl has gentle curves like the hills,  but her eyes are fierce, fierce and dark. Someone once told her she had hair the color of mahogany. The girl is not tall, but like the lanky languorous trees of the valley she reaches for the sky.  She hopes someday to fall in love, but she also hopes someday to help others, other brave souls, to reach like she does. To reach for the butter yellow sun.

The valley calls to the girl.  It sings to her.  She wishes sometimes that she could sleep in  the twisting branches of her favorite Madrone tree, its heart red and bare and smooth, like hers.

The girl slips outside each morning, in the still brightness, and the door closes with a hush behind her. She stands on the stone patio outside her kitchen window, the girl, and she listens to the valley singing. Her feet get cold and pale and she shivers in her pajamas, but the thick honey light of the valley pours over her shoulders and she doesn't mind. She listens to the tall grasses whispering, talking of summers long past, and to the rustle of the trees. She feels a little lonely, then, but it’s a beautiful aching, a lovely and peaceful sadness.

The girl, the gentle warrior, she smiles each morning, a private smile, to herself, and then she feels content. And then the girl watches the hills bathe in the wash of the sun. 

Silver and Gold

On my eighth birthday, my mother put a deep red rose on my pillow,

Sweet-smelling, luxurious, seductive.

She wrote a note, tied it to the long green stem.

I don’t remember what it said, but I remember waking up to read it,

To inhale that heady scent.

I felt so grown-up that morning,

So sophisticated.

That morning I was a princess.

I was an angel.

My eighteenth birthday is  in three days.

I still feel sometimes like that eight year old girl, awed and in wonder, smelling a rose. .

There are days that I feel like I did on my sweet sixteen, when I blew out the candles and laughed and laughed,

the candelight illuminating my face,

 sparkling with eye shadow.

Those are the good days.

But Sometimes I even feel  like I did at my sixth birthday party,

When  one of the other little girls told me she didn't like her party favor and I began to cry.

Sometimes, I don’t feel like a grown-up.

Sometimes, I feel like a child, four years old, pretending to be asleep in the car so my father would carry me in. Needing to be held.

I think in all of us the years are just layered, one on top of the other.

They don’t get replaced.

And there is something beautiful in that,

Because even though the United States government says  I am an adult,

I can carry my  weight,

I can have a voice,

I can buy cigarettes,

I can enlist,

All of these strange measures of grown-up,

I am still growing.

Maybe not any taller

But I am still growing.

My heart is expanding and changing,

And so is my mind,

Making room for new ideas, new hopes and dreams.

When I was in kindergarten, we learned a song about friendship.

It went like this,
“Make new friends and keep the old,

One is silver and the other’s gold.”

I like to think of our memories like that.

I like to make new ones and keep  the old,

Filling  my treasure chest, building my collection.

I don’t know which one’s silver and which is gold,

But I know I have plenty of both.

Renew

Hello folks, 

As we crash headlong into the holiday season, I have found myself reflecting on faith, tradition, and religion. This is the poem that came from that.  Comments and feedback always appreciated, as are your own reflections on spirituality, in any form.  And please, please subscribe!  

Renew

I went to church yesterday. 

I hadn't been in a long while

distracted as I was by all the minutiae of being alive. 

I'm not very religious, and God always seems 

a little 

distant 

to me. 

But I went to church yesterday. 

As I was sitting there, listening 

to a charming Irish priest, 

I realized 

I belonged there.
With the little girl with the pink bow in her hair
who was carrying the communion bread, 

With the crying babies and white haired old women, Santa Claus pins on their sweaters 

I didn't remember all the prayers, 

and I couldn't find all the songs in the hymn book. 

But I belonged there. 

"I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic church",

 as much as any modern-day woman can. 

  And when I shook the hand of the old man next to me, 

I really did wish

"Peace to be with him". 

Most of my friends see the Bible like its written in Mandarin.  

Catholicism with is ritual and its saints, 

Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, 

It doesn't make sense to them. 

But it's home to me. 

I learned in science class that fire is an essential element to revival of a forest, 

That there can not be life without burning. 

So maybe this new found fervor 

This faith I thought I had lost, 

Maybe this is my renewal. 

As I go about my life 

Falling in and out of love, 

Creating and learning and exploring, 

As I exist, 

I will carry this little flame in my heart, this little gift. 

I went to church yesterday.  

December Darkness

Hello Everyone!
I am hopelessly in love with words and sharing them, so I am creating a forum to bring mine to you all.I've got inkstains on my heart.  I had a blog years ago, and I loved it. It fell by the wayside--but I am trying again. I love feedback on my work, and that's why I am asking you, truly, to tell me what you think of what I post here.

With that--I thought I'd just jump right in. This is a new poem I've just written: Please read!


December Darkness

I like the darkness and the silence and the wildness of walking alone

Because even eight pm on a Sunday night can be  exciting when it is the first of december

The night is inky and the streetlights are throwing pools of orange at my feet

The trees make good company

And it is just cold enough that I feel adventurous

I feel safe in the soft blue dark

That new winter dark

 See I was born six days before Christmas, when the sunlight is short lived and the nights last forever

People are afraid of the shadows, but we December children, we like the night.

People string up tiny false stars,

 little icons, onto their roofs and through their yards, twinkling.

Those lights that look like laughter.

I was born six days before Christmas

Born two days before the winter solstice, born into those long, long nights.

So those little stars are home to me.

They are a birthday present, a celebration in miniature.

 But I prefer the stillness of no lights at all.

I prefer a cool peaceful  night

When the trees reach to scrape the silken sky

And my breath puffs above me and around me

Proof that I am alive.

We winter babies, we don’t mind the cold, and we don’t mind the grey, and we don’t mind the night.

We are strong, we are  brave.

We’ve got a touch of that pure cold air in our hearts, a hint of that darkness in our souls.

That darkness that there’s no need to fear,

 that darkness that’s just animals sleeping and the moon not woken up yet.

That special December 1^st darkness

We’ve got a little of that

And we like it.