poem

Find the Good – Day 18

| Sheree

I’ve been thinking of moving to the Highlands, buying a small cottage by a loch and swim every morning.

There’s a river too, that haunts the glen, between my cottage and the mountains. I feel it, breathing within the shadow of mountains.

I know this is not just a pipe dream. I know someone who’s done it, made the move across the border, living a blessed life.

I’ve been thinking of an open fire where I’d bake bread with the sun rise and when ready sit sit out on the porch with thick slices, warm and buttered. Dripping butter and the air smelling like home.

My home.

I’m thinking there’s one village store miles away. I walk every other day for exercise. On the way, I bird spot. Blackbird, moorhen, blue tit, eagle.

Small talk with the store owner might be difficult after long moments of silence in my cottage by the loch. In the silence I can hear myself better.

Being a water woman and a mountain woman, I will welcome the solitude and the haunting rolling out before me as nothing would hold me back.

This Year – Day 17

| Sheree

‘This year is gonna be about me. Never will I ever have a reason to doubt me.’ – Emily King

This year is gonna be about me, I’m gonna turn the tables, feeling all the feelings. Or maybe numb it out?

Car horns honking through the open window, sirens cutting through the heat haze, YouTube chatting while they play Mario Party, with the aim to lose. The only time when coming last makes you a winner.

I don’t wanna leave but this year is gonna be my year. I’m gonna love the music I love and I’m gonna love the words I love, words that open up worlds, one word at a time, each word moving further away from you and your crippling crap.

This year is gonna be all about me. Never am I gonna waste my time again trying to get your attention. I’m giving me all the attention. Chicken salad and all that stuff. Mayo too. Because nothing is off the agenda, for me, this year.

This year is gonna be me travelling and enjoying the experiences, alone and whoever comes along for the ride. You better have a ticket to ride as we’ll be crossing hostile borders and encountering enemies within. So you better be down for some deep shit, some deep emotional shit.

This year is gonna be all about me and no never again am I gonna doubt me and what I’m capable of. I’m allowing the cool breeze to caress the hairs on my arms and just breathe into the moment, budding into bloom.

This year you’re not gonna be able to handle this honesty, this raw heart of love and pain, again and again.

Weathering to shine through.

This year is gonna be all about me. And never again am I gonna double me. I’ll have no reason to, as I’m gonna shine through.

Sakura – Day 16

| Sheree

At the tail end of winter,

loaded with blousy, pink,

double flowers with frilly edges,

are Japanese blooming cherry

trees. At mere sight,

I become mooncalf,

mooning over their delicate

blooms. Reborn.

For a few weeks at least,

hope trembles through

the boughs.

The present moment

like each pink, soft cluster,

is cherished.

An ars poetica poem* – Day 15

| Sheree

“I write only because

There is a voice within me

That will not be still.” ― Sylvia Plath

Poetry is where we are ourselves – Elizabeth Alexander

i try to connect beauty using words as healers of possibilities from the state within, the voice, a teacher, a sage, where my poetry winters, where I can see the ‘I’ like a clearing through the trees, where imagination lingers inch wide mile deep, conjuring for change and connection. i try language, not to trick or demonstrate my intellect, but to spark simple, stretching blossoms into ‘we’ rather than ‘them and us’. from the state without, i’m a beast, caged and muzzled. swallowed. cornered and supposedly cowered, i come out writing, wading into dangerous waters, owning my imagination to practice potential futures.

*“An ars poetica poem is a poem examining the role of poets themselves as subjects, their relationships to the poem, and the act of writing.” —Poets.org

Tell me what you’re looking for in a relationship in one sentence – Day 14

| Sheree

Ohhh good question.

Laughter and fun, with trust and communication, honesty and commitment but not in a heavy sense but much love and affection and respect and joy, I spent a long time in a relationship that wasn’t joyful and really what’s the point, life’s too short to waste time and energy on people who don’t treat you right or who aren’t happy in themselves, I want to be with someone who makes time for me and us, just like I make time for them and us, hey I get it, people are busy, leading busy lives but I’m of the belief that if you want to be with someone you make time and effort to be/do just that.

Tender, Undoing Self Within Night’s Skin – Day 13

| Sheree

I say to myself : stop. Stop undoing yourself within night’s skin.

Tell myself a promise to sort out my living habits so I don’t die prematurely like my mum.

Imagine the tenderness: like soft beige rolls of fat, like soft pink tongues languishing in wet mouths, like soft woollen blankets tickling toes.

I may no longer be the second daughter, the misfit who could conjure a soul’s reflection through colourful art.

Please night as you stretch out your skin one more time, please be tender with my damaged, twisted stars.

Couplets – Open Heart – Day 12

| Sheree

Feel the breeze through the trees. Even the leaves strive

to stay alive. The energy is flowing through you, my love.

Pause and feel its spinning. The way of this world , freedom

is for the taking with every breath, linger

in the outside, the black outside while still enclosed within,

for now.

Revisions – Day 11

| Sheree
Come Again

Day 9 – Goofing off Revisions/ redrafting

Ten years. Ten long years of changes, I’ve been dreaming on paper.

I had to give myself permission.

To create again. Safely.

I was fearful. Fearful of the word. Images are safer. Images speak to the soul.

Paint. Takes me back to being a child and all I wanted was love and joy.

Tapping into this feeling of being with self, I show up to the page. Each day.

Each day, I have the opportunity to start again.

Each day I have the opportunity to meet the sunrise anew.

The Belly of a Mountain – Day 10

| Sheree
Glencoe, Scottish Highlands

We obscure the outline of the belly of a mountain*

when we write about nature

we enter the realm of words being useless

we enter our narcissistic imaginations instead of being in with the mountain

I miss the mountains, the Highlands, Glencoe

At some point, I became marred by immobility, by staying close, staying safe

Now I return in my dreams, awake and grapple to describe their grace and poise

Abstracted longing. Never enough, never true enough to capture their form, their presence

I wait for my return. To sleep within the belly of mountains,

the mountains I’ve always felt are old Black women resting together, safe

*Day 10 prompt was: Find a single sentence someone else wrote that sticks out to you and use it as your first line. Let your poem unfold from there.

This adapted line was taken from ‘Against Nature Writing’ by Charles Foster.