kyrieleandra

tribute to Wordsworth

2005-10-09T23:11:39Z

"What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind."
William Wordsworth

A candlelight expended it's life long ago. Nothing left; Burned out useless wax and ash.
Leaving a dark void; emptiness within our souls. Lonely unanswered prayers in the Cathedral.

A funeral honors the death of something expired; a forgotten offering. Pure essence
of life; energy spent and sacrificed like Jesus bleeding on a cross.

Great tragedies overwhelm our soul. A litany of funerals on a rainy windswept day.
Dreams of former self interred in a peaceful garden; honored by love; remembered in kindness.

We kneel anticipating eternity and the Spirit; longing for answers to everlasting whys.
Laying down our burdens on the ladder to heaven as earth's machinery clangs in chaotic noise.

Skyward we ascend squinting our eyes downward. Meanwhile something is borne; Awakened from a troubled slumber. Time nurtured the lonely ignored seed. Fathered by fearless storm and forgiving sunlight;

The cloudiness of our vision swirls with clarifying hope. Light shines through rose colored glasses
Opening our eyes till we see beyond desolation and scorched earth. Faith looked beyond death.

Ghosts

2005-10-08T23:43:29Z

She had waited for him upon that cliff face
Her life had been put on hold for months
Lost opportunities for tea and books
Lost moments for meditations or prayers
Friends wore the mask of strangers.
Her own face wore a long lost borrowed smile.

She waited for his life giving breathe upon
her neck and shoulders. His kisses sustained
her as milk from a mother's breast.
His embrace wrapped a warm healing balm around her heart.
Only now it had felt more like a cage holding back hopes; dreams; and
her soul; which battered itself against the bars. She was a bird
who had never wanted to be caged; who never wanted to wait for anything.

Her grandmother's tattered shawl felt like Nana's loving hands
upon her shoulders as she watched her parent's caskets being
lowered beneath the earth; planting ghosts to flower in her springtime.
Her mother's eyes eminated a beacon of light to a chaotic sea swell.
Her father's hair blew in whispering winds, calling to her; "I will watch over you."

She felt her mother's ghost like fingers warmly touching her scraped knee;
kissing boo boos; smiling radiantly; love brightly obscuring the sunlight.
She felt her father's reassuring good night kiss; tucking her in after a night
of banishing monsters from under the bed and closet. His hands tousled her hair
after a day of playing tea party and horsie. Her parents nurtured themselves in
her child-like body.

She felt she had lost everything in waiting all this time.
There was so much time lost; So much to gain; though she knew not what.
She wanted to feel at home; instead of being haunted; of being accompanied through life
by ghosts manning a flying Dutchman under a ceiling of stars; never reaching
the Cape of Good Hope. Instead she felt moored to a dock waiting; always waiting.

She turned into blackened rocks and blue green waves embroidered in
sea weed lace. Her eyes strained to see but could not see the horizon.
Her vision was blinded. She was kissed by the rain. Warm sunlight caressed
her flesh. Waves tossed up their arms worshipping her soul; freeing it
to sail home; giving the ghost she had become her release on wings and wind.

The past

2005-10-07T14:11:47Z

Today I walked along the rocky dam
While dusk painted violent hues across the sky.

Nightmares riderless galloped into the sunset
Searching for kindred spirits among the trees

But a gentle wind blew flower petals along the path;
Making me wet with white pink rain.

Our words played through my mind garbled words;
Like two stations fighting over the same frequency.

I will never know why you reached out to me
When you made that phone call to check on me.

Why did I let you see the me I wall away
In Camelot inhabited by chastity and betrayal?

Why did I show you Avalon with meadows and moors,
Rocky cliffs and soft hills with flowers dancing along like fairies?

All that is left of you and I are two armies of Arthur and Mordred,
Fighting one last battle over my immortal soul.

And the castle walls fell here creating a dam
Which holds back regrets, unsaid words, and lost communication.

It will hold until the rain comes or my tears flow;
Then petals, soil, and stone will reform themselves
Into new etchings, new maps, new landscapes to explore.

The Skin of a Moth

2005-09-15T18:26:14Z

The Skin I am In

The skin I am in is made
entertwined in threads of you and I.
Blended and blurring us into
undefinable lines; twisted symbiotic
knots.

The skin I am in feels worn but warm.
Caressing every inch of you and I.
Shielding and shrouding us; cocooning us;
as we float in fetal-like anticipation.

The skin I am in protects our larval self
from tears and blows; from storm and sun.
Till we are ready to shed it's confines
There is more of us than it can ever hold.

The skin I am in; stretches and groans;
against our bodies giving way as we push
harder through it's breach. Our bodies
ache through torn flesh; outgrown by you and I
as we fly away on separate winds.

This is the story that my poem is based on.

The Emperor Moth

A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth.

He took it home so that he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. On that day a small
opening appeared, he sat and watched the moth for several hours as
the moth struggled to force its body through that little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had
got as far as it could and it could go no further. It just seemed to
be stuck. Then the man, in his kindness, decided to help the moth, so
he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the
cocoon. The moth then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and
small, shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch the moth because he expected that, at any
moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the
body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the little moth spent the rest of its life
crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was
able to fly. What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand
was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth
to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from
the body of the moth into its wings so that it would be ready for
flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and
flight would only come after the struggle. By depriving the moth of a
struggle, he deprived the moth of health.

Moral: SOMETIMES STRUGGLES ARE EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED IN OUR LIFE. IF GOD
ALLOWED US TO GO THROUGH OUR LIFE WITHOUT ANY OBSTACLES HE WOULD
CRIPPLE US. WE WOULD NOT BE AS STRONG AS WHAT WE COULD HAVE BEEN.

Starfish Thrower

2005-08-17T01:19:11Z

The beach has been my cathedral
Each cloud, ray of sun, wind swept rocks;
Rivaling Michaelangelo's Cistine Chapel.

In this sanctuary, I meditate
on the demands of God. " Why must
you demand so much; when I feel so spent?'

Waves sweep away my footprints;
My good intentions, my dreams, and my failings.
Whoosh whoosh, ba dum ba dum.

I am the starfish thrower; destroying
constellations in the sand; cupping stars,
throwing them into an unpredicatable sea.

Sometimes only the waves and sunlight
can save the stars. I am only the watcher
on the shore. God's own lighthouse.