WORLD AS TAPESTRY (photomorph) & THE TAPESTRY (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

THE TAPESTRY

putting my right arm around her shoulders
with a companionable ease that I have with
no one else, I suggest she join me
in the walk back

as I'd felt she would she continues to walk
next to me as I head for the road home,
our silence further evidence of the ease
between us that I so cherish -- no need
or even urge to fill it with chatter

we reach the steps, something I know
she assiduously avoids using but again
I sense she'll stretch her usual limits
if I stay relaxed and casual, making
no fuss about it

as I start to take my first step down,
I offer her some brief verbal instruction
on just how to place her feet on the
steps, the backs of her heels braced
against the risers

we climb down the long flight to the highway,
while I explain that, yes, we can and will
walk on it, as at this time, no vehicles -- not
even bikes -- are allowed to use it, only us folk
inclined to be peripatetic under our own power

this comment grabs her attention, and she
raises her head long enough from intense focus
on the challenge of the stairs to look toward
the silent highway down and ahead where people
of all sizes and shapes and ages walk, winding
like a myriad of gentle threads
in an endless tapestry:

light and dark, long, short, and tall, all strands
spreading and looping, rising and falling,
wherever the Great Spirit guides


[free verse poem on a dream of 9-14-17. I made an intense, painful, and difficult decision/choice late yesterday, at the end of a very emotionally difficult day. What a surprise and gift this dream was to wake to a memory of! BTW, I identify almost entirely with the initially recalcitrant "she" of this poem. If I am a part of the "I" figure at all, she may represent my High self, or connection to Spirit. Photomorph "World as Tapestry" (3-14-17 10032ev3a) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

HANGING BY A THREAD (photomorph) & ON DUST MOTES (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

ON DUST MOTES

not even the folk in my dreams care to stick around
much these days, staying only so long as the parts
they play remain casual and gossipy, filled with
bland images, and the occasional real person
but no real feelings, no depth

these fair weather faces and forms instantly fleeing
the hold of morning recall as soon as the truth
of my painful and tumultuous search dawns
on them, the stiff wind of reality
blowing them apart

abandoning me to grasp after the dust
of their extinction like motes dancing
in a stream of bright sunlight,
the shaft of an all too familiar,
glaringly barren hope


[free verse poem on a dream of 9-13-17. Photomorph "Hanging By A Thread" (10-3-09 7266ev5) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

BREATH OF MIDNIGHT (photomorph) & A MYTH-MOVIE-DREAM (re-post of old free verse poem) by Roswila

A MYTH/MOVIE/DREAM*

Night after night he has summoned her
to his dark forest kingdom,
to quake before the cold throne
of his love.

Silent and brooding, he dips
his horned head in a massive
swoop of entreaty.

One taloned hand grips a stone arm
of his throne, the other trembles
vaguely toward her.

The pale wraith of her soul
flutters before him.

"Why do you call me here," she cries,
"night after night, stealing my soul
from the sleeping flesh of my body.
You know I will never love you."

Her small face waivers faintly
alabaster beneath the stars.

"Yes, this I know, this I know."
He shakes his head sadly
and boulders leagues away tumble.
He shifts his goat thighs, and mice
and owls and lions flee for cover.

"Yes, this I know. I have called you
one last time ... to set you free."

She burns briefly brighter, a pale
pink rose, under a sere moonwind.

He spreads his black wings, utterly
blocking stars, moon and sky
from her sight.

Then folds them around himself again
with a sound like a universe
of crumpling leaves.

"You are free. And I ask only one thing
of you." He reaches toward her again,
opening his dark palm.

There in its center glows a small pearl,
black and glimmering.

Compelled, she steps toward him.

"Accept this pearl from my heart.
When memory of me rises like the dark
of moon, and it will, this I know,
it will, hold this pearl of my pain
to your heart and think of me.
And no matter where I am, what worlds
or abysses I traverse, I will know
that I am not forgotten."

His huge hand trembles, almost closing
around his offering, but opens
at her touch, like a wilting flower.

She lifts the pearl in her insubstantial
fingers, then cradles it unsurely
in her palm, as a wind rises
like a long sigh.

When it stops, she is gone.

He raises his long face to the stars.

The only sound in the stark night grove,
a thin howling.


[*re-post of old poem, written sometime before I moved here to CA in Feb. 2008, based on a movie character/myth, Calibos, and a subsequent dream I had. When first written and posted, it came from Calibos's point of view for me. On this re-reading and posting, I'm deeply connected to my own frustrated yearning to be set free from an unwanted and haunting attachment, as the "she" character (Andromeda, in the movie) ultimately is. Photomorph "Breath of Midnight" (4-08a-15 027v2) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

LOCK-UP (photo) & YOU AGAIN! (dream based free verse poem) by Roswila

YOU AGAIN!

you again in a dream, wearing some stranger's
face and body, but I'd know that energy of yours
anywhere; and, as always, there's something I don't
understand, this time literally as your words are totally
garbled; the only thing abundantly clear, as always
before, you want to get what you're saying through
to me, even as you lean into me in an habitually
seductive but mostly very serious way, the fullness of
your sexual heat held away from me as if locked in a
black box out of my reach; but none of this is what you're
trying to say to me, and I'd have dropped these weighty
and cumbersome attempts to understand ages ago, but
my tired old hawk's eyes see too much to let them go,
to let them smash like empty shells on the rocks below;
and yet, I freeze in the midst of flying off again after
tonight's frustrated struggle to comprehend: could it be,
after all, that your message is incredibly simple?
to give up trying to know or to understand?
stop trying to anticipate what might happen?
and walk that tight rope of the moment
without the net of knowing?


[non-dream free verse poem written 9-12-17. Photo "Lock-up" (8-7-17 003v2a) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

FLY AWAY HOME (photomorph) & WINDS (haibun about 9/11) by Roswila

WINDS
(a re-post, in memorium)

Although I cannot bear to watch much of the 9/11 memorials on the T.V. today (the first anniversary of the attack), I did see part of one early this morning at ground zero, in which the names of those killed were recited. As I stood crying before my T.V., the wind from my open terrace door whipping across my living room in an unusually turbulent way, I remembered an old belief that when great souls pass on a tremendous wind comes up:

wild winds:
releasing the souls
of the dead


[haibun (prose paragraph with capping haiku) written on the first anniversary of the attack on New York City's Twin Towers. As I've mentioned here before, and posted lots of other writing about same, I was living in NYC at the time of the fall of the towers. I talked with a couple of fellow residents about 9/11 earlier today and was a little surprised how deep the grief still goes for me. Photomorph "Fly Away Home" (4-17-10 10014e2) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

UNKNOWN SEMAPHORE (photo) & NOT EVEN IN HER DREAMS (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

NOT EVEN IN HER DREAMS

she falls asleep asking the dreams-
to-come for a clarity she can
readily write about in the morning,
wanting even a tiny bit of ease
in her life for a change; effort
goes with the game, but it's
exhausting at times

and what does she get? yeah, leave it
to her dreams to give her the exact
opposite of what she wished for:
that man who shows up irregularly
and always in a deeply
enigmatic way

as usual with him it's only clear
he's telling her something she just
can't understand; at least this time
there's no doubt that he truly wants to
say something to her and not just futz
around, as he hands her a letter sized,
glossy, brown and magenta
brochure, with slim elegant gold
lettering on the cover page

"I just don't get it," she thinks,
"what does this say to me? It might
as well be in Japanese ideograms!"
and she hurries to the bathroom
leaving the folded message behind
to do her urgent business, and as
she sits there, another of his brochures
manifests in the air in front of her:
ACK! she slams the door shut, can't she
even have peace and privacy here
on her solitary throne?

must he follow her everywhere?
teasing but offering no way for her to
understand? yes, she's quite pissed off:
but at what? him? her? more likely at
a fate that advertizes love and passion
but never comes across, not even in a
place that's safe for them both:
in her dreams


[free verse poem on a dream of 9-9-17. Photo "Unknown Semaphore" (8-21-17 006v3) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

* * * *

until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.