Poetry

 We are All Trees

I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts.

People say I have a creative mind,

that I think of things that some could never imagine up for themselves. 

That is why my words are on this page.

Sometimes I imagine what an inanimate object would say to me if it were to speak. 

This desk upon which I lay my laptop being one of them,

I imagine it is happy.

It was carved out from a tree.

Happy

because it was to be recreated and set a new. 

It has been placed at this destination at some unbeknownst time.

Dust has covered its craftsmanship,

and I cover the dust.

The dust reminds me that time passes

and we cannot physically stop it.

Sure, we can stop ourselves from living in the present.

But what good does that do?

I like the dust’s texture under my palms as I write.

It reminds me of dirt.

The memories carried by dirt as an object in my memory.

We all have a story. 

Just like how we all have fingerprints. 

Our stories are our identity and the vary thing that shapes us. 

Oftentimes I think back on the stories I think shaped me most. 

I do that mostly out of curiosity of my present state and actions. Also in a longing for that which has been lost. 

Those things that I say that I long for, have only been filtered out by time and choice. 

If time weren’t to pass, or if we didn’t choose differently than we did in the past, 

change would be minimal.

Who would we be without change?

Ultimately without change, there would be no happiness and we wouldn’t reach our grandest desires or goals. 

The more we choose for ourselves,

the more we learn and the more we learn,

the happier we will be

We are all trees

We go through cycles of every kind in our lives.

Just as the leaves change and then fall, 

We must change us all.

Think of the beauties of those leaves and all there shapes and varieties in one tree.

We are all trees.

Our branches are sticky,

obnoxious at times,

but most importantly,

we tend to hold the branches or others because 

we know what it’s like to fall.

Empty River

Today, 

I walked the remnants of an empty river. 

I peered into its shadows, 

And saw what was left of its past. 

And you know what else I saw? 

I saw me.

I saw,

all of us.

Who each

 at one point or another,

Have felt empty

For a season.

Let us embrace each other’s emptiness 

And let it not be a surprise.

I used to come out here with my air pods

 listening to songs that controlled my mood. 

Oh how much I missed back then! 

The most beautiful songs to me, 

the thing that fills me most

 is the wind through the trees

 and the buzz of the bees in my ears 

and the grass tinkering through and dancing before my eyes.

That is what fills me.

Details of the earth,

 they draw me in.

 They say my name.

 They sing my homecoming song.

 The birds sing their tune 

and I sing their song. 

This is their home.

All the education I ever needed was from the trees.

No water here this year.

River,

let me nourish you with my footsteps.

I will be your water as you fill me. 

Instead of a prescription for pills, 

write me a prescription to drink from nature’s rivers.

Give me permission to drink freely.

Give me the freedom to explore.

And the uninterrupted time to learn

And to drink deeply from the valve of life.

Let that valve be mine

And dew me wed.

They let me into their home.

I did them a favor and didn’t wash off my feet to come in.

They buttered around as I’d hope they would if I wasn’t there.

Real calm and quiet i sat down beside the creek they call home.

They fluttered a buttery flutter all around me in an embrace.

Flying all around me in every which way possible,

they let me in to their home.

As I got slowly and quietly up to leave,

I thanked them for my stay. 

Stretch marks.

But not physical ones.

Mental and emotion ones.

Getting from point A to point B,

A stretch.

Stretch marks and sizzle waved shores.

Toes in the sand, 

My mind off land, 

Adrift. 

Out at sea

A sailboated mind, 

Among the wind.

I move when I want, 

Never to land.

With the whispering tide,

In circles in my mind. 

Going straight,

A drunk pirate walking the plank.

To fall in, 

who knows. 

Away with the sharks,

What good company. 

Sublime and a lime tasted tongue,

I bite too.  

The ocean feels like home.

I think she knows me better than most people do.

She lets me in all I am.

Every part of me to be embraced. 

Wrapped up in with nothing held back. 

That’s how I see Him.

I see Him here.

He sees me.

The feelings of peace and calm draw me in.

All the details, 

All so thin. 

I’m perfect for Him, 

Just as I am.

The ocean, 

she reminds me of all that,

With her golden sand. 

I climb mountains.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I will climb mountains.

I climb mountains of physical pain in exercise. 

I’ve climbed mountains.

I climb the mountains of debilitating depression. 

I’ve climbed mountains. 

I climb the mountains of crippling anxiety.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I climb the mountain of loosing loved ones.

I’ve climbed mountains. 

I climb mountains of loneliness.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I climb mountains of insecurity.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I climb the mountains of identity.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I climb mountains of trauma.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I climb mountains of internal conflict.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I climb mountains of all kinds.

I’ve climbed mountains. 

I climb mountains.

I’ve climbed mountains.

I will climb mountains. 

We all climb mountains.

He climbed all the mountains.

He climbed all your mountains.

Now He climbs them with you.

Lean on Him.

The wind whistled on by

as out of the corner of my eye,

I saw a bird.

Not just any bird. 

A bald eagle swooshing by.

Then there was me 

happy as can be

on top of a mountainscape.

As you look out at the mountainscape,

You see the purest of white snow with little sprinkles of sparkles.

As you see them,

it’s almost as if you bring them inside you.

They warm you, 

The snow is soft to the touch. 

All of a sudden your riding,

gliding effortlessly down a low sloping hill.

You have not a fear in the world.

You are free.

With snow as pillows of protection, 

With snowy pine trees on each side of you,

You smell their freshness and escape. 

I saw a representation of my grandfather in those waters this morning.

The sunrise was immaculate with its groomed waters beneath.

The colors were of a sweet softness of blue and pink pastel.

The waves came in slowly and lapped the shore.

There was nothing too special about it by its surface,

but there was complexity in its simplicity.

It was like the ocean knew my name. 

It moved with me and to me.

It first moved around with its morning stillness.

But when I moved closer,

it was like it reached for me with its wavy arms.

It reached for me because it knew me,

it missed me and loved me. 

I think of the ocean as waves of blessings,

they just keep coming,

And we are the partials of sand. 

The Lord’s hands molding us and spreading us to farther seas. 

With every wave, comes a season

a rhyme or a reason

To have us dance around in it all,

To laugh when we fall, 

To fall just to get back up again, 

He has us do it all

for us is all. 

Tonight 

Fast asleep

Waves continue 

to your feet

How many? 

None can tell

Just ask the man who fell

The earth is so vulnerable with us.

It unfolds for us each day.

The sun comes up with its jagged edges,

Pierces our eyes with its sharpness

And doesn’t hold back.

Some days,

Clouds cover the sky.

The earth reveals her clouded mind.

Other days,

Her sky is clear 

And her and we can see better.

Then there are also days,

Where thunder and lightning storms

Fill her eyes to our surprise. 

On moderately windy days,

She tells us to breathe as she does.

“Just breathe,” she says. 

“Just breathe. 

The calm days only come so often.”

For she knows that best. 

The longest love story there ever could be

The story of the sand and the sea

to contemplate the lady of this love story

I thought of ships and the lips of each crashing wave

The kind a man should crave

With her hips to move with momentum the waves of her love to all her children, land sea creatures and to him, the keeper of her heart. 

Their love so embraced and interlocked without the other, they know not.

Days, months, years and many moons passing

Wars, tumultuous catastrophe may crumble them, beat them or anger them, but together they stay

Since the beginning of time they array 

Mirroring the Gods that created them

Mother & Father

Love without end

The way the waves dance and fall into each other and glide and kiss the top of of the shoreline in a calm sometimes violent swaying motion, that’s what gets me. 

She was a girl with a story to tell

Just as most do

Little did she know 

She was fragile then ocean breaks 

Larger than the bee’s Chase

Trapped in between 

Feeling good 

Then feeling well—

Empty 

Empty as a vase

Heavy as a storm

Was there a man to keep her warm?

Physically, no,

But there was a light that held her dear.

The light seeps in to calm her

Everyday 

Noon and night 

A whisper from a kite

Reminding her to fly

To feel she was alive

A feeling of oxygen to fill her breath

Much needed reminder

A curve to her grin

She knows it be he

He with a hearing ear

His light is all

His light is the call

The birds speak sweet songs of glitter to my stubborn ears

They bring together the glories of my early years

A life to live stomping around

Elephant feet for shoes

No room for one to snooze

The alarm has sound 

I’ve caught the clown

What would you say if I told you the mountains could move?

If I were to tell you that you were the cause? 

Would you keep them from moving?

Would you move them faster?

The test of power is patience 

And patience is power

The essence of a grand beauty,

mountains dressed in white. 

A white, blind men can see.

Down below, creatures know.

A bird eloquently vibrates her wings nearby,

a celestial buzz rings through the trees.

A mother bird tending to her calling so dear,

allowing the littles to divulge in her offering. 

A worm, so vibrant to the taste.

An event on an excellent spring day.

Each noise, each movement so clear.

Trees listen through the holes in their trunks,

a sublime melody upon the grass morn dew.

Glistening, just glistening like a child, so new.

Rivers of water droplets laughing as they climb up, down and around rocks.

A squirrel gathering nuts and a fox trotting across.

A man with a pack and hiking boots,

walking, just walking around the bend.

Does he see the fowls, such handsome trees? 

Or does he drive to a nearby chair? 

The Lord knows this stranger’s tale,

for i above don’t know it well.

I know my feet and the way they dance,

I know the way to France. 

Does he know how to dance?

Could I teach a stranger’s foot? 

Yes, yes of course I woot.

His mother, were from once he came,

did she gently lead her beak?

extend her hand to him so weak?

His steps to show,

his life will know.

Such deeds, a bird knows, the Lord above.

We experience so much in life.

so much life and so much complication

So much love and so much heart break

The people we meet through it all

The people we hurt and the ones we forgive and the ones we maybe forget

Those make up part of who we are.

My mind always goes to that

We can accept things, reject or throw others out, but ultimately it is our choice in who or what we become. 

The concepts of good or bad are relative.

The beauty of decision making is that maybe wrong decisions make right decisions. Two lefts do make a right? Or maybe 800 lefts make the right that sticks. 

It is up to us.

I am a writer.

I am a writer whose clenched, but soft hands 

were ripped and cut by paper

by a mucky fraudster.

I, being terribly overwhelm by said events even now,

suffering their effects.

The morning, brisk by the air of fall,

sent the flitting legs of a runner up a wall.

The raw wind touched her bare and numb skin well.

Dark dirt and shaded trees embraced her,

but she swatted them out of her way. 

Seeing the sun up ahead,

she had no fear of freezing.

Reaching a crowded trail of trees,

she noticed the sun peeking through.

The light creeping slowly through the leaves,

warmed her conflicted heart with ease.

The bodies of the leaves full of color,

perplexed her mind like thunder.

Thunder of the storm she was facing.

And the thunder of each cloud that was covering.

Each step over the rock-covered ground felt lighter

as the leaves empathized with her and her trouble.

Her legs came alive in a swift elasticity that brought joy to her soul.

On top of the mountain, 

she looked down at the race she had won.

Triumphant and proud,

she stood in a crowd.

Not a crowd of people,

no,

but a crowd of warriors.

The leaves and the trees,

true friends indeed.

And empathy’s sisters

of heart and soul.

No, no. 

This story does not end.

The terror of the memory,

only put on pause.

To soon be awaken from contentment,

by a woman who was thought to know the road,

appeared suddenly about-face.

Startled by her sight,

the runner notably jumped.

When asked for directions 

on a road she knew so well.

I am a runner.

I am a runner stripped of contentment.

But I’m still a writer

and a penniless one at that.

I am a fighter,

a fighter with words,

myself,

others, 

opinions, 

heartache.

Being a writer,

a master of language,

a magical symphony I feel within me.

The keys as my notes

on my laptop piano.

Fast and slow

rhythmic patterns.

A wish not to feel

but a beat I know so well.

Trauma, 

fear,

anguish, 

panic,

but peace still I bear.

He is still there.

A hurt I’ve known before,

above any physical pain I’ve known,

a mental agony.

Only tears &

a hard left poem

I write.

Lines, 

just lines,

here they are,

here I am.

I’m still a writer.

2019

Hello moon

Whose stars you bounce your light

Twinkling to suggest to not give up the fight

Thank you

Bless you

May the stars blanket you tonight