Tag Archives: dark

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Wait

I came close but no cigar
I want a mind that I can love
hand holding mine in the car
I send a quiet prayer above
Love of nature, kind to friends
not afraid of their own dark
Lust to learn until their end
willing to risk to build an ark
Curious but not controlling
Not addicted to booze or drugs
Intense at times and others strolling
Opinions, laughter and lots of hugs
My heart open yet I don’t faint
I think I am waiting for a saint

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I wrote the poem yesterday, but I have used up my memory in wordpress and now I need to go through and delete things. Any advice, Martha? I know you did it. It seems that I have to delete the post and the photograph, or is that not true? Advice welcomed.

I search my photographs for gloves and it comes up with two: foxgloves! Well, strictly speaking, that is a form of glove, right?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: glove.

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the pale reflections of our bitter selves

they are neglected, you know, by most
the worse self, the worst self, the dark
the impulse to yank the moon from the sky
when she slides down the stair, to see who’s there

there are few poems written to the dark
impulses, the demons, the underside of our hopes
and dreams, the nastiness, the grief, the anger
we are kept in the dungeons below the basement

below the belt we band together huddle
in a pile of claws and unfeathered wings and teeth
wishing for a blanket, to be held, rocked
loved, wishing for the mothers who left us

the fathers who denied us, pushed us away
so that we knew and know what to hide
what to deny, what part of ourselves to kill
we try and try but few do

and then they are mourned, people say
they don’t understand but ask the demons below
and oh, they do, they do! maybe the next plane
will be kinder and love the demons

the bitter self, the dark self,
that longs so badly to be loved
that longs forever to be loved
that is not loved this round

this round

written 11/24/2023

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Welcome dark

This morning I listened to this song and album.

https://thewinetree.bandcamp.com/album/kentucky

I bought the CD over a year ago at the nowhereelse festival in Ohio. I heard The Winetree live and thought it was gorgeous. I bought others for myself but this was for a friend. Today I realize that the entire album, every song, has sorrow and longing.

Which makes it an interesting choice for someone who said, “I am always happy.” The first time he said that, I thought, wow. That is not true. I don’t believe that, so who are you lying to? Himself first, right? Because it seemed so obviously not true.

I never gave him the album because he stopped talking to me.

When someone says an absolute, that is a red flag for me. I wonder if the CD was for the emotions that he is not in contact with and stuffs. I went through a time where I tried to unstuff all the old emotions that I hid in my complex and frightening household growing up. My biggest ones were grief, fear and humiliation. It was not safe to express those: they would be made into a story to entertain people. I started to deal with them two years after my mother died. My sister did too.

This poem, Butterfly Girl Comes to Visit, is about my sister and my unacceptable emotions. Another, Ride Forth, is about stuffing feelings and then bringing them up and letting them go. I’m not saying we are ever done. I don’t know if we are. I thought of it as going to the depths of the ocean. The trunk at the bottom is full of terrifying monsters, but I had to open it anyhow. And at the bottom or somewhere in the trunk, is Hope, just like Pandora’s box. It took a couple of years of work to get to hope. It was so hard in counseling that my days off were more difficult than clinic, and that is saying a lot, because clinic is hard work.

Our culture is so afraid of the dark and of emotions. By doing my difficult work, I could be present and tolerate patients’ often difficult emotions and say, “Well, I can understand why you would feel that way. It is a really difficult situation.”

I do not want to be happy all the time. I think that is silly. What I want is to feel my emotions, in real time, and be honest with myself about them. As Rumi says, grief may be sweeping your house clean for a new joy. How can we love without grieving?

Welcome to the rain and the winter and the dark, and welcome to resting and quiet, and the hope that the sun will return.

And on the other side: My mom loved me.

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I am Elwha

How many cats?

Mom takes me and Sol Duc out together in the lovely dark before the cars start roaring. I don’t like the big trucks or the buses. First she put on our lifesaving devices.

I have the red one. We went outside. Sol Duc is mad because mom and I kept following her when she would try to run off alone. But why did mom laugh when I ran to make sure she was ok? My lifesaving device is a little heavy and wiggles.

Anyhow, we love to go outside. And come back inside too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: spooktacular.

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Dark flowers

It is getting darker and the sun is rising later. Halloween is on a Tuesday, three weeks from now. I am walking the cats in the predawn time and sometimes in the dark. Sol Duc is black and her harness is dark red and I can’t see her at all if it’s good dark night. Our rules are that I let the leash go if they stay in my yard or the neighbor’s yard. We have a fast road for our town and I have had a cat get killed.

When it’s really dark, I either need to keep the leash or put a light on Sol Duc.

Meanwhile I am taking spooky photographs of flowers in the near dark.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.