The Door

Thirty-one years ago, I came home after a long day.

It was over and finished.

It all happened in a blur.

To this day, I have only snippets of images from that day.

I barely remember who I spoke to.

And I don’t know what I did that night.

I don’t remember what I felt on waking up the next day.

Nothing felt real.

It was like an horrific nightmare happening to someone else.

Dad was dead and we had buried him.

I was never going to see him again.

Never going to hear his voice.

All we were ever going to have was over and finished.

The impenetrable door permanently closed.

Mostly I prefer not to think about it but now and again, it’s there.

And when it is, it’s awful.

Reminiscing

For no reason I can name, I found myself trawling through my blog and reading aloud some of the poems I’ve posted there.  Damn, I write good stuff.  A lot of it is raw and stirs emotions in me because of course it takes me back to what was going on when I wrote each piece.  What I didn’t expect was to find my eyes brimming with sometimes sad but healing tears as I revisited old wounds.

Of course, not everything was like that.  In fact, a lot of it has been helpful in re-examining my life choices and ascertaining where I’m at with those issues now.

But it is nice to review and take stock. Often we’re so busy with each new drama that presents itself, that we just keep going from one to the next without time to take stock and absorb the learnings.  Why did this happen?  What did we learn from it?  How did we grow?  If we were faced with that situation again, would we handle it differently?  Why or why not?

These are important questions. They help us to define who we and what we are, which in turn defines what we bring to the world both each day and in the wider scope of our lives.  That in turn defines how we interact with those around us and whether we enrich their lives or detract from them.

Even if we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see, there is always the possibility for change.  Nothing in this universe is still.  Everything is in motion, even if some are only in motion at the subatomic level.

What I have seen most in my writing is the constant observance that in order to change, first I have to acknowledge and own who I am in the ‘now’, even if I’m really loathing and despising of it.  Only then, do I have a foundation upon which to build. As long as I insist on gaslighting myself into believing a more comfortable fantasy, I can’t change a thing because I’m not dealing with the truth.  It’s not easy.  In fact, in most cases I find it brutally hard.  But I also find it worth the effort.

So I spent some time reminiscing.  I haven’t decided what to do with that yet but I’m sure it’ll be interesting.  It always is.

Silent Screaming

I thought we had forever
Mindless that time was slipping away
I didn’t know what I had, until I didn’t
Silently still screaming my pain

Softly my tears fall when no one sees
Your image still fresh in my mind
Oftentimes holding onto the pain
Unwilling to let you go again

Judging myself weak, finding myself lacking
Unworthy to speak your name
Longing for one more moment
Imperfect words hanging on my tongue
Always knowing there is no way to fix this

Hidden Secret

Nowhere can a secret keep
Always secret, dark and deep,
Half so well as in the past,
Buried deep to last, to last.

Keep it in your own dark heart.
Otherwise the rumors start.

After many years have buried
Secrets over which you worried,
No confidant can then betray
All the words you didn’t say.

Only you can then exhume
Secrets safe within the tomb
Of memory, of memory,
Within the tomb of memory.

Dean Koontz
The Book of Counted Sorrows

The Secret Place

30 years
A lifetime
A heartbeat
All the time in the world
A second in the scheme of things

I still recall that day
Waking to the sound of the door buzzer
My mother on the doorstep
Bringing me news I never wanted to hear

The disbelief
The shock
The tears
The shaking hands

The sight of you on the bed
Curled like a child
No longer asleep
No breath to stir the chest
All the words spoken
A life finished

All eyes were focussed on you
But I felt you to my side near the door
I knew you’d stayed to see us one more time
And say goodbye

I lingered a little after the others left
And told you that you could go
That it would be okay
That I would be okay

And I knew you heard me
Surprised that I could still feel you
But you weren’t alone
And I knew you had to go
And you left

Life was cold thereafter
A sadness that never quite left
A feeling that I never wanted to leave
Because it kept you near

What would I have otherwise
What could there be
If I let this last part of you go

So, I held it close
Protected in my heart
In a secret place nobody knew

And I held it there
All these years
And I will never let go
It’s been 30 years
And it took forever to go by in a flash

Je Ronronne

Curled around an orange furball

Cheek against her back

Brown ball at my shins

Fluffiness guarding the hall

Soft squeaky squishy gurgling

From the ball underneath my ear

A smile touches the corner of my lips

Inwardly, I purr

Two Halves, One Whole

Within us all lay two souls
The goddess and the god

Both are as one and need each other
To both inspire and experience

The goddess is creation
And brings forth the world around us

The god is knowledge
Who experiences the world and revels in it

The goddess cannot create
Without knowledge of that experienced

The god cannot experience
Without a world created by the goddess

The goddess does not know what to create next
Unless the god shares with her what things already are

The god cannot experience anything new
Unless the goddess can learn from his knowledge

The goddess desires to create
The god desires to experience new things

The goddess within brings forth
What the god without experiences

Two halves, one whole
The world we choose

Silver Linings

This is a poem I wrote a long time ago, back in 2001.  I was reviewing a writers’ group I ran back then on Yahoo and came across it.  I felt like sharing it because for some reason, today it feels relevant.  Enjoy.

Today I walked
I looked at the world around me
And saw the blue beyond the grey clouds

I recalled the hurt of recent days
And the feeling of worthlessness that’s pervaded my life
And it didn’t seem so bad for a moment

I recalled the many voices around me
Telling me to be strong and that I am loved and valued
And I heard the voice of the Goddess in them all
Reiterating my place in the world

I felt a surge of hope that things could change
I felt myself moving forward and a for a brief moment
Saw a better world

Today I walked in the Spring air
And raised my face to the sunshine
And smiled

I recalled the hurt of recent days
And the feeling of worthlessness that’s pervaded my life
And it didn’t seem so bad for a moment

I recalled the many voices around me
Telling me to be strong and that I am loved and valued
And I heard the voice of the Goddess in them all
Reiterating my place in the world

I felt a surge of hope that things could change
I felt myself moving forward and a for a brief moment
Saw a better world

Today I walked in the Spring air
And raised my face to the sunshine
And smiled

Hourglass

What would you do if you looked at someone you loved
Someone around whom your world revolved
Whom you couldn’t be without
And who made your heart sing
In a million funny, ridiculous and amazing ways

What would you do if you looked today and knew
That tomorrow would be your last ‘today’ with them
That in less than twenty four hours
Your heart would be nothing but a bottomless pit
A barren wasteland of grief and sorrow
Which no glow could lighten and no fire could warm

Would you revel together remembering the ‘good times’
Create more precious memories to add to the pile
Or would you open your heart and say all those things
Which had never dared cross your lips
So that in the cold days ahead
You won’t have the stabbing pain
Of regretting things left unsaid and undone

Would you be determined to let them know
How they changed your both life and yourself
In ways they can’t even imagine
And how much a better person you are for knowing them
All the while crying within remembering moments
Both good and bad
Intermingled with plans, hopes and dreams
Which will never be realised
As they slip through your fingers
No matter how hard you grasp

Or would you hide, the grief already too much to bear
And pretend all was well
Not having the courage to share what you knew
Not wanting to burden them on their last day
But to allow them to enjoy the time they have left
Would you remain silent of your feelings
For fear they may sense something is amiss
And you might have to explain yourself
What would you say?
What could you say?
What would you do?

What would you do if you looked into the mirror
And saw the sands pouring through your own hourglass
Too few grains falling much too fast
Knowing your time is running out and the clock is ticking
What would you do?

Would you spend the time with those you loved
Creating just a few more precious memories
To warm them through the dark days ahead
Or would you spend your time writing letters
Or recording messages
To speak to them and allow them the comfort of your voice
In the years to come
Would you cry for moments you will never live to see
Or for those who will live to see those moments without you

Would you seek out those you fought with
Hoping to meet on a bridge of understanding
Built by you both
Or perhaps offer a small act of kindness or a smile
To someone whom you had been meaning to reach out
But never seemed to quite have the time
Who is more important?
The relationships you have already validated
Or the ones where something remains undone?

What would you do if you looked around your home
And knew that in less than a week
All those things that you loved
All those nick knacks that tell a visitor
About you in a way that goes beyond words
Would be gone forever

Loved possessions divided between relatives and friends
Who may or may not treasure them as you did
Or worse, given to charities
To the hands of people who will not cherish them at all
People who did not know you and do not care
Your most personal belongings
Papers, photos, treasures kept hidden
Ransacked and violated
Poured open to be gazed upon and judged

What would you do standing within and gazing
At a place you once called home
But home no longer
Empty and sterilised
Void of anything that tells the world you were here
That you had a voice
And meant something
A space into which new people come
And claim as their own
People who do not know you and do not care

What would you do standing today
Looking into your eyes in a mirror
And watching the sands run out

For it is later than you think
And the clock is ticking on us all
Moments gone can never be reclaimed
Moments not yet embraced will be regrets forever
In the heart of someone we cared about
The expected time of days, weeks, months and years
May suddenly be funnelled
Into the space of moments or seconds

For there are no tomorrows
There is no today
There is only now
And the sands are falling

Relevancy

I have been going through my personal journal program and found a poem that I wrote back on November 1, 2006. Just over 5 years ago. It is still as relevant today as it was back then. Perhaps more so.

The older I get the more I learn that all I can do is observe. It’s our swift rush to judge that always gets us into trouble.

Sure I don’t always get it right. In fact, a lot of the time, I catch myself out and have to correct myself. The journey is the key. Where you wind up has nothing to do with it. Journalling over so many years, even decades, has allowed me to see the arc of my life and how things have changed.

I can see how I’ve grown and the distance between who I am today and who I was back then. Sometimes it seems the wall is tissue thin and other times a gulf. But this is who I am: a combination of who I was and who I am today moving towards who I will be in the future.

On this day, like so many days in my life, I hurt. This day, I chose to write the feelings and let my brief smattering of words speak the volumes that lay beneath.

Who am I to judge
The things that seemed right
And made sense
When you did them

I listen to the excuses
For the past
Hoping to salvage the future
But we both know that’s hopeless don’t we?

Time cannot heal some wounds
Nor can it mend some hearts
It can only bear witness
To the actions that were
And the pain that is

I cannot judge
It is not my role
I can only feel
Then try to forgive and move on

Words cut
Actions wound
Tears burn
And for some things the price is too high

I will not judge
It is not my role
But sometimes I wonder
Why I wasn’t worth more.