The mind sends a love letter…

Gentle heart, ………….naïve as a child
beating quietly so as …. not to disturb anyone
I love your wonderful foolishness. Your strength
not the strength of a tree, or a fortress, or a prison
but the strength of the fragile walls of a termite nest.
So easily breached, but in the very moment of damage
your healing hordes start scurrying to patch the breach.
the tear-wet mud dries fast, and leaves the wall stronger
than ever- yet still able to breathe. I try to protect you,
but you are wiser than I, and my blundering attempts
to protect you often do you deeper harm.
But you do not blame me – you heal
and then simply forgive
my gentle heart
wonderful
foolish
heart
♥

Thresholds

Once I stood at the threshold of life
all opportunity and experience
spread before me in aweful newness
in my hand, beating strongly
my unique young heart
new and scarless
in its naive impatience.

Each holding
a different treasure
we walked down into experience
like swimmers into a vast lake
walking to the drumbeat of our individual rhythms
clutching at different comforts
as we were submerged into vividness…

…until out of the kaleidoscope we return
tired but triumphant
ready to lay down
the burdens that have ripened
through a lifetime
of days

and even if noone ever reads it
still my heart’s story will be eloquent
in the scars and knots and fissures
of the tireless walls as they tire at last.
the song of those days of ripening will be heard
in the voice of its last faint beats
as I stand at the other threshold of life.

Another poem for another of Rick Mobbs’ eloquent pictures. Just can’t resist….

I’m not sure if the objects in the hands are meant to be hearts, but that was the way they struck me. And I liked the idea of each starting off on a similar journey, but with very different hearts. Hence the poem.

In the night

Someone, somewhere is playing a tune
his fingers strumming in the gloom
on the trembling strings. And my heart
echoes the pulse of his subtle art.
Someone, somewhere is playing a tune,
calling to me through the rainswept dark.
In the unknown distance, under the moon
someone, somewhere is playing a tune
on the trembling strings of my heart.

This is a response to the picture above, by newjack at photobucket, the Monday mural at poefusion.  My response came to me as a very complete visual and aural image, though it’s nothing I’ve ever experienced! It started as a triolet but I modified it because I didn’t want the refrain lines to appear together until the final couplet, and because the repetition just seemed to work better this way.

Heartsong (poem)

The wind
The wild and terrible wind!
Alone with my ghosts in the darkness,
Alone with the wind that rips music from my harpstrings.

My heart,
Lonely mourning heart,
Pounds in the night for lost hopes:
Rhythmic counterpoint for the wind’s heartsick sighs.

My life,
The cherished illusions I called my life,
Rip away from me scrap by scrap
As the gale hurls me towards the destiny I half feared, half sought.

My strength -
The strength I dared not believe in -
Lives inside me, called up by the darkness.
Heeding destiny’s call in the thrumming of heartstrings.

My song!
The song of my wildness,
My wanting, my freedom, my power.
The music the wind calls from my throat is my heartsong!

I came across this evocative image by Mariposa Viejera at Poefusion’s Monday mural – a weekly image posted to inspire poetry. I wanted to have a try at writing something, but for a few days nothing seemed to want to come. Then last night, kept awake by a wild storm, this poem just turned up in my mind and demanded to be written down!

Open heart surgery (haiku)

Searing needles stab
Stitch sutures for the hurt heart
Healing comes…. slowly.

(a reflection on my previous post natural cycles of recovery on how pain can be part of the healing process