Forlorn longing sighs
Spring’s promises to Summer
Pivot toward dark
Weak, last ditch appeals to Sun
Spring promised; prolong our youth
RL
Haiku/Tanka
Inspiration & Photo credit: Autumn Alps by Le Drake Noir
Minute Misery; Haiku
7
Category Archives: Photos
WANING TREASURES: Colour
The diminishing days of summer begin to tug at my only-just-now-relaxing heartstrings. I’m not ready to give up the heat, the light, the energy of the extra sunlight; not where we live anyway.
We live in a rain-forest and not the kind that, in winter, envelopes the area in near bathwater-warm mists. Oh no, ours is that infamous, sopping, bitterly chill ya to cellular level till you cry kind of dampness. That cheery fun matched only by the varying depths of blanketing grey masses that blot out said light of grace.
So, is it any wonder I choose to claw back the impending doom and seek out the remnants of brilliance and shine? To hang onto the trailing sweet scents of fresh leaves and grasses and florals? To seek even more comfort in the flowing lightness of shimmery breezes (and really cute apparel)?
All of which serves to ease even the biggest workload into a sense of partial vacation. Maybe it’s closer to the idea of just vacant, but still… if it works for escapism purposes…
Soon enough, the world’s turn will darken patio libations and I will have no choice but to submit to the inevitable. Grey. Slate, Dove, Ash, Charcoal. Grey. Well, at least that is, until we get to the mixed and even, garish jewel tones of Christmas. Oh my… Can’t wait!
In the meantime, some of my micro-tributes to summer colour:
DAISY CLAIMS
Momma’s favourites
White blooms speaking innocence
Thus mine are yellow 😄
Haiku
BC coast, July 2017
HIDDEN TREASURES
Secrets of the heart
A mere two souls know my fave
Primary option
Haiku
Photo, Peggys Cove, NS
JAUNE SEDUCTIONS
Sunny, bright, happy
Deep, warm, inviting caress
Golden embraces
A bed of warm intellect
The real couleur de l’amour
Haiku / Tanka
Photo, Northwest Cove, NS
RL
Street Art Takes Pain
I came across a pretty great poetic thought on Twitter, and be damned if I could find it again to properly quote and credit it, but it said something along the line of, “poetry is where the pain goes”. I’d wager there’s a pretty big crowd of us that wade in that poetic pool.
I’m not saying I had a painful week, but once again inspiration hit while I was perusing a friend’s street art photos. Some old heart matters reared up, and I couldn’t resist the pull of the bard. So a short ode to a long week. Wishing all a really fabulous final August weekend.
WITH BAITED BREATH
Help, help she called out
Alas, only silence heard
No hook on the line
Haiku
Street Art photo provided by @createdbyw
DOG COLLARS
When the deeds been done
The new victim acquiesced
Signed on for the ride
Oh, the glee, oh if only
Oh, to be flies on the wall
Haiku / Tanka
Street Art photo provided by @createdbyw
HARE OF THE DOG
Oh, soul Girl, step slow
Do beware red hearts, Alice
Their souls are so black
Tread most carefully, angel
Every promise, a trick
Haiku / Tanka
Street Art Photo: Unknown, Porto, Portugal
RL
Figments Of My Heart
Summer heart purging, it’s like spring cleaning, but the summer haze softens reflection edges without the sweat inducing labour. If you’ve a chance to sit back for a bit with your memories and you’ve grown enough with them to have learned something real, something honestly measurable, forgiveness is sometimes an unexpected result.
I know there are different understandings of what forgiveness means, and for me, it’s mostly along the lines that the flare of anger sparked by a flash into my past is essentially gone. It’s that point where I can remember an event – even with a shudder, but without the piercing hurt. Where I can speak freely without tears, where I can see I was led astray and where I followed even when my instincts stung me with a no.
It’s when I know if I were to meet that situation again, I’d know exactly how to handle it in the best interest of my heart forevermore. It’s when I know I have stopped beating myself up and in clarity, realized where it all took me. So far, even the worst of monsters in my life ultimately mined strengths and abilities I’d never dreamed were in me… and beyond even that, the truest reveal is, I’m at peace.
Proselyliars
Do ask the prophet
Please sate your spiritual needs
‘Cause he’s God’s right hand
Ask him, pray tell all knowledge
Your belief, the deadly price
Double Billing
Double dog billing
Starring bereft alpha souls
Red and gold flame outs
Beware harem frenemies
Two faces, double the bites
Ogres and Monstrosities
Fair and fairer won
Booby prizes of the year
Outsmarted themselves
Thought they knew better than, but
Fell harder than anyone
RL
Here’s to the times we get the last laughs… Cheers!
Street art photo credits and much gratitude to the talented Randall Willis of CreatedByRCW and So, What’s Your Story
Tempered
Narcissus banished
Comforting reality
New sweet nothings real
Overwhelmingly cherished
All storms tempered by love’s grace
And, I win.
Fabulicious street art, thanks to the wonderful walking & eye spying work of Randall Willis of CreatedByRCW and So, What’s Your Story Randall’s photo posts are amazing views of art, wildlife and human wildlife… He has gifted me another batch of creativity challenge and for that, I’m thrilled to have the privilege of immersing in poetic thought for most of the summer. Hopefully.
RL
Haiku/Tanka
Hey 2017, I’ve Been Waiting For You Forever!
Last month I was sent a note reminding me about the kindness or kick-in-the-ass power of Karma. Interestingly, it was a topic I ended with last year. I guess I was meant to review it again. However you want to define Karma, mostly it’s believed to be the energy of all-knowingness and balance, equalizing all wrongs with a right, etc.
2016 made me witness that, regardless of how intense the attempts to rationalize the most self-serving of behaviors, the real underlying motives are already and always, known. In other words, we can run, but we can’t hide – not even from our own very best designs of delusion.
Regardless of how open and honestly we enter a situation, we may not be received in the same vein. Trying to find or understand how anyone can talk themselves into believing their own good motives, while they take advantage of someone, is futile. It’s an infinite circling of crazy.
The sort who act in these ways may never capitulate. Contrition is a game of supply and demand. They demand you supply it, even when they’re blatantly exposed. Twisting falsehoods into acceptable fact for themselves and anyone willing to believe them, is fair play (flattery is their best friend). …Pffft, no matter for the all-knowing Karmic eye.
We don’t always get to see this, but this year I did; regardless of how things seem on the surface or in public, the course correction energies are always at play. Where I was devastated that I’d lost something amazing, I found I’d been absolutely rescued from the lowest of possible futures. Yes, it hurt, all the way to that final understanding, but when the smoke cleared, it was obvious that some months of pain could have easily been an engagement in years of agonizing misery. Well, what can I say? Things are looking up.
I hope for the same for any others who have struggled to keep heads and hearts above water. Fight for what you have to, but be bold; bravely look at its truths too, then hold the faith that you’ve got what you need.
Thank you, so very much, to those who saw me, heard me, and stood by me. Thank you for your strengths that allowed you to gently hold my heart even through my (most definitely miserably) worst. Thank you, for teaching me and healing me, and most of all, for the love in 2016.
Wishing the very best for all souls in 2017… Cheers!
RL
Happy New Year – 2017, here’s to those of us who are more than ready for different and definitely more uplifting experiences this year. Cheers to all!
REDress Day of Recognition #MMIWG 2016
This is a day to pay tribute to those women and girls we’ve lost from Indigenous communities, and to honor those we have hope will one day return home. October 4th is chosen to honor the lives of over 4,000 Indigenous women tragically taken from their loved ones, most often with little awareness of the circumstances between 1980 to 2016.
This day is meant to raise awareness about that and of the ongoing violence, at significantly higher rates toward Indigenous women and girls than any other demographic on the continent. With awareness comes greater hope and opportunity to get to the root of all the issues that encompass these losses. We remain diligent and attentive as a national inquiry is now underway in Canada.
It’s the 10th year of this recognition started by the Sisters In Spirit Vigil (SIS) organization which, along with an idea begun by artist Jaime Black for public displays of red dresses to represent missing and murdered Indigenous women, includes marches and candlelight vigils in many towns and cities across the country.
Last year I hung my red dress under my weeping willow tree. This year I hung a dress in a location that holds the memory of many women. The entire effort took some interesting legwork and cost me some scratches and torn clothing, but I wanted to speak for them. I wanted them to know we remember, I wanted them to know they are loved.
I held out my tobacco offering and prayers and hung up the dress while a friend took pictures of my appeal for awareness. He edited out the hanging stand, lending an ethereal effect. It seemed to make the dress feel free or freed.
Within this all, I send my love and hope for all our grandmothers, mothers, aunties, sisters, and our daughters…
(click or scroll over photos to see entire picture)
Tobacco offering and prayer
Soaring eternal
We’ll always remember…
At rest
Kisâkihitin…
Update October 6th: Photographer Darren Quarin drove by the farm and found that the chair had been thrown off the hill it was photographed on and the red dress was nowhere to be found…
RL
Photo & Editing Credits: Darren Quarin, Quarin Photography
Waking a 12 Year Old’s Dream, Part 1 – Short Story
The girl ran over hills and dunes, striving to keep up with him while holding back the hair whipping all around her face. He urged her to follow, and hurry. He made jokes about how tiny she was… how he could just throw her into his pocket and rocket them away. They were going to wherever their running legs would take them. Who needed a plan when any direction was good enough? There wasn’t any need to determine a finishing point. Their companionship was the ultimate destination.
Her 12-year-old heart laughed with his in complete ease. He told her she was the nicest person he’d ever known. He called her every name that he knew meant precious and he said that no one could ever be the best friend she was. She was so happy to have found him; no one wanted her for their best friend like that – ever. She was somehow always lacking a certain something that said No. 1 material, like the kids who always get picked last for every team.
She’d first sought him out when she caught glimpses of him in behind all the grown up discussions coated in angst, behind all the searches for adult contentment that had surrounded them for years.
At 12, he was still as shy as he’d been at 6, but she saw him when most barely acknowledged he’d even existed. He was taken off-guard when he realized he’d been spotted. He was used to being ignored, often drowned out by back to back beers or wine or depression. When the grown up around him wanted company, the last person he chose was his 12 yr. old.
The boy didn’t know he was lonely until he’d been seen. He didn’t know he could actually even love. He came to adore her, first for her seeing, then for being. He couldn’t bear to be away from her for even an hour. He’d go to sleep with her fully enveloping his thoughts until he woke up to resume them. Lifetimes of plans replaced empty, faraway dreams.
One night, after an effort of determined, careful planning, they got to share a room, snuggled within the safety of one another’s presence. They were startled awake though, in the middle of the night. The grown ups were fighting, loudly. It terrified the boy and he bolted. He ran as fast as he could. He left her behind.
Somewhere in the middle of his running he decided the grown up of his experience was right, the only way to be, the only way to cope was the head-on pursuit of simplicity, the eternal chase of a good cocktail and easy lovin’. Safety ensured by familiar pattern.
When she realized he’d turned back to the shadows, she stumbled from the room, once again rushing, this time blinded by the tears coursing over her face… As she ran, she heard his grown up and his grown up friends laughing behind her. They yelled out, “Ah, face it, kid you weren’t enough anyway”…
When she got home, her grown up cried with her as she rocked her. She whispered, “I’m so sorry sweetie, but you were always meant for far, far more than simple”…
RL
Dedicated to one 12 year old heart that still doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks about her or them; ever the bravest, of them all…
Photo Project: … Reluctant Releases …
Relentless year called
I became a waterfall
I was swirled away
Released old dreams; moved
They commanded me, let go
Heart crushed from goodbyes
New is on its way
Release dross for destiny
All reward is nigh
Trust what angels say
Tears are healing; scars get cleansed
Real love fills all wounds
Life is pushy when it wants the best for you. Sometimes you have to give in & give up, a lot…
When this photo shoot was set up in the spring, I knew I wanted to wear the dress I’d hung in public the previous October 4th as requested by Metis artist, Jaime Black. Her ‘REDress Project’ is an art-based awareness campaign in tribute to missing and murdered Indigenous women. Red dresses represent these women. (See tree photo and background notes here)
I’d chosen to hang my dress under my beloved weeping willow tree. That seemed like a poignant statement in itself. At the time of that participation, I was soul surfing through a course of life-altering loss, trauma, and life and death events.
In a way, even that gorgeous tree experienced the same before it let loose its majestic beauty. I’d saved it years before from being brutally hacked at when my ex would attempt to eradicate the ‘strange weed’ growing in the middle of our yard. … I guess my point is, there was a whole lot of understanding under and within that tree.
So, when I met up with Nadya Kwandibens, a very skilled and renowned photographer who honored me with her talent, she suggested we head to a local park and search for more of a nature-based/natural background. When we arrived, she scanned the landscape and then she pointed and said, “There – head over there, I think we should get you under those trees” – the weeping willows.
Nope, she had no idea of my story, it was just how this particular circle would finish. It seemed like a good omen and I suppose it was. I have come through what I think is the greater part of those trials and I have gained new strengths and continue to build them.
From a time I was certain I couldn’t even breathe for another 5 minutes to standing up tall enough to see – that no matter how hard the testing, no matter how hard life knocks at me, I will keep getting up. I know that now, because even when there shouldn’t have been a way I could have, I somehow did.
Like my tree, I am still standing.
RL
Photos by Nadya Kwandibens, Red Works Photography
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/discover-challenges/portraits/
You and I, there’s air in between
La Beauté du Jour…. Tanka Lot
Tres’ récompense for
working the same come-hithers
Bien des champagne
Beaucoup décolletage-filled screens
Non belle special, after all
“Not a Sam-sue, Chris, Dan, nor even a Joe… say Bon Soir, Narcisse”, said the lady.
……………………………..
Message In A Bottle
Called her a lady
’cause east coast friends, north and south
proved that truth for him
Lady knew their secrets though
Wine reveals more than flesh shots
……………………………..
Gone Fishin’
Tank’d a lot, that lot
and soon enough the angels
moved his lifetime best
to The Only Man worthy
Luck to all fish ‘O plenty…
RL
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