Bee in Dahlia
Click on link below for short article on the ongoing bee disaster…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/13/honeybee-problem-critical-point
Resurrection
“From winter’s tomb of lifeless blossoms, thou, O Christ, art resurrected in new buds of roses, marigolds, bluebells, jasmine, and worldful varieties of flowers. Ever-mutating, multicolored flowers of lifetrons growing in the gardens of the astral land are fragrant thrones of thy Presence” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Hallelujah! He is risen.
Tempus Fugit
Poof!
After awaiting September all summer, the month of the Autumnal Equinox came and is almost gone. I try desperately to stop time, clinging to each day, to no avail. These next few months, my favorite time of year, go by in a flash, like sand sifting through my fingers. Poof! In a flash the trees turn beauteous, with variegated flames of color. Poof! The leaves are gone.
First, there is the change in light. The sun, still hot in mid-September, does not pack the punch it did in July, when one could be outdoors for an hour and come in with a change in skin color. Temperatures cool. The grass starts to stop growing. The “blood” of the trees starts to flow back into the trunk, causing leaves to change color. Walnuts, acorns and apples fall. Butterflies, so rampant outdoors in August, have gone inside the stomach of many a child as they go back to school. Even adults are not immune. Many feel the flutter of “back-to-school” anxiety come Fall. Summer vacations are a memory and it is time to “honker down” at work. Fall offers a new beginning but there is a tinge of anxiety in facing some thing new.
And most of all, Fall is a time of riotous color, when a walk in the woods finds one reveling like a drunk, besotted by the yellow, orange, crimson, russet world which our eyes imbibe like a hefty cocktail. It is a time when Italian comes to the lips in a loud “Que bella!!” The green of summer is bucolic and raises the spirit, but the many colors of fall intoxicate. People start talking of peak color, and leafing becomes the pastime of many. It is the time to plant bulbs and endlessly rake blowing leaves.
But Fall is a time of melancholia, too. Flowers die. Reptiles go into hibernation. Insects die or overwinter. Songbirds migrate. Trees eventually loose their leaves. And the end of the lazy days of summer brings with it shorter days, longer nights, and concomitant depression for those with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Moments of sobriety seep into intoxication with the new world of color as we may remember loved ones who can no longer share the beauty–who can no longer enjoy those coveted, cooler, crisp days of September when coolness kisses the cheeks. For autumn is a celebration of endings, too, perhaps best described by the French poet, Guillaume Appollinaire, in his poem Autumn:
“A bowlegged peasant and his ox receding
through the mist slowly through the mist of autumn…
Oh the autumn the autumn has been the death of summer
In the mist there are two gray shapes receding.”
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.
The Web of Fears
Caught in a web of fears
full of wet tangled tears
been this way for years
of course there are triggers
that make fears look bigger
but it is hard to figure
a way out of negativity
a way back to levity
and to my old productivity
it is hard enough to fight
the dramas of mind with my might
without succumbing to fright
about losing you
tis true
fighting at once the physical and the mental
is far too much for a mind balanced so gentle.
My Former Life
In my former life I was a bee.
Why else would I keep sticking my nose
into the private, pollinated parts of flowers?
In my former life I was a turtle.
Why else would I hunch my shoulders
into a seeming shell, my back a carapace
to shield me from a sometimes dangerous world?
In my former life I loved thee.
How else could I account for my “knowing” you
from before the first time we met,
for “seeing” the you in your inner depths?
Some would say I risk damnation
for a belief in reincarnation.
Yet this answer satisfies me on so many levels
and requities my thirst, quieting my myriad of questions
that the old belief system did not.
Unpopular in the west,
woven into the fabric of life in the east
in which I clothe myself, sewn by a strong affinity,
a strange familiarity,
attraction mystifies.
Most of us cannot remember
the details of the other lives,
and are left with fractured fragments of the past
glistening like sea glass in our hands, on the seashores of our minds,
trying to piece together a picture
of a previous existence.
Love is timeless and mysterious
and though I dread the inevitable,
the loss of our life together
in this life,
I know we will be together again in the next and the next
ad infinitium
for something as sacrosanct as our love
is eternal.
Welcome to samples of my work in various art forms showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.
A Microcosm of the Macrocosm
To see a cathedral in a flower,
to be drunk with its nectar,
under an opalescent sky.
*
“Infinity is our Home. We are just sojourning awhile in the caravanserai of the body.”
~ Paramahansa Yoganada~
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
Starbursts
Starlike
explosions of blue
with an
out of season
dusting of snow
a foretaste
of the approach of winter
a sugary confection
one is tempted to ingest
a similar temptation
(I suppose)
as those tempted by coca.
A Wee Life
Oh wee one
how I envy thee
trudging up and down
the raindrop slopes
of rain and nectar
safe within the confines
of radiant yellow
succulent pink
in a self-contained
world of beauty
however short-lived thy life.
The Intimate Intruder
Je suis tres intime
avec les fleurs
I am very intimate
with the flowers
and fear I am intruding
into their secret
world of silent sensuality
visited by bees and butterflies
and other tiny creatures
seduced by their siren song
of quiet sexuality
seductive to all
who pause to peek
inside their blooms
The Backyard Circus
Did you ever stop to think
what it is like
to hang mid-air from a leaf’s edge
or to glide along a leaf
blowing in the breeze–
or crawl upside down
upon veined slopes of green?
or to give’s one’s all
to a loved one
stories high from the ground
hanging onto her for love
and dear life?
*
Such feats go on all day long,
ignored by you–
our talents unacknowledged–
because we are lowly creatures in your eyes
and yet we can do
acrobatic feats
you cannot even approximate.
*
Did you ever stop to think?
“Life Goes On”
“Life Goes On”
*
That’s what Dad always said,
Remember, Tony?
My dear swarthy brother,
dark of skin,
warm of heart,
we shared the same hazel eyes,
a mix of Mom’s Sicilian brown
and Dad’s brilliant blue.
We lived separate lives,
you in Michigan,
me in New York,
you with three adopted children,
me, childless with Ko-ko and Tom.
You weren’t supposed to DIE!
You and I were to be
fellow way-farers
on the road through life.
We were to live parallel lives
and you were supposed to die
when you were old and feeble,
not middle-aged,
in a tortured death!
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
*
“Life goes on.”
*
Today I light a candle
on my altar to you and Mom and Dad
and send you Reiki
like I did while you fought for your life
for two years
after a prognosis of two months.
My heart aches
on this second anniversary
of your death.
*
“Life goes on.”
*
Your wife, your children, and I
cry out for you
but you have moved on to some higher form.
You paid your karmic dues,
with your diagnosis, cancer.
Long before,
you always told me
not to worry,
that you’d live long because
only the good die young.
But you were too good
and you died far too young
and I live on in my little, reclusive life,
Ko-ko no longer here,
just me and Tom.
I should have been the one to go
but the good die young.
*
“And life goes on.”
Heresay Hear Today
In
sin
u
ation
over
what
Katy
did
or
didn’t
do
to
Dahlia
is
here
say
prattle
of
goss
i
ping
blooms
filled
with
en
vy
Oh Dying Lily
Oh, Lily
in the valley
of despair,
the devil’s lair,
thou seemeth to be shy
with your glossy, glassy tears.
One day we all must die
and we all have fulsome fears
of dying.
It is not
for lack of trying
your life to live;
it is not from sins of lying
or reluctance to give.
You lived your life purely,
always kneeling demurely,
and though your petals turn to crepe
your form still has a humble drape,
still praising He who made you
in your last living days
and inspiring us to follow suit
in your reverent ways.
The Stealth Kiss
Unseen by a background of fellow flowers
he rushed towards her purple petals
to plant the blossom of her bosom
with a kiss
when
blew a breeze
that steathily stole his kiss,
before she ever knew, sending it wafting
above the treetops to the forever fields of lost loves.
It’s All Relative
In the land of the giant Lily
the little ant is King! *
Man thinks himself giant, so important, even grandiose, at times,
when, in relation to the universe,
he is of microscopic stature,
less in size than the tiniest of insects
who live in a veritable macroscosm beneath our feet.
(Adapted from the proverb: ” In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
Hooked
You hooked me,
twenty-eight years ago,
with your shy smile
and elusive ways.
I was scared
but you were more so
which made me brave.
I would I had known you all my life
(or even before)
but I feel/felt like I had
although it took years for me to find you.
With your rough hewn edges
you taught me to speak up
when before I spoke not.
I have learned to take care
because you have taught me to dare
and today on our 24th wedding memory,
despite our little irritations and frustrations
as an old married couple,
I am hook-line-and-sinker-
in-love-with-you,
and want to use what time is left
together
to bring one and other to God.
The Infinity of Spring
Light embraces each flower
encasing it in color
energizing each blade of grass,
an infinity of green,
creating the world we see,
the dream screen
photons of energy
we drink with our eyes,
as our total being,
like the infinity of blossoms,
is caressed by the Light.
Cruel Beauty
The nature of paranoia
feels persecuted by nature
sees flowers gossiping
their pistols pissing/hissing
stamens wagging
with stories about
the outsider
who turns away in tears
malicious, vicious words
pollinating the silence
while venomous stamens
draw ovules of blood
as the razor sharp leaves
slit slender petals
Two Lips of Forever Love
He didn’t “get it,
the “loss thing,”
when my aunt died mid-April,
and I lost my second mother.
Didn’t “get it” when I lost my first.
This was not the only time
he was lost in oblivion and
puzzled by my tears.
*
He didn’t see me hurting
from the loss of my lineage,
and his lack of empathy for my grief
as he made me meet and greet
a friend the next day, as if all was normal.
This time I balked, bolder and older,
and he agreed it was time to ponder
and talk with his mentor.
*
When he came home
one night days later,
full of hugs of apology,
and tulips on the kitchen counter,
it was a breakthrough for us both.
It took a few days
but what came out
brought tears upon tears.
*
Not having grown up
with emotional displays
he didn’t “get” the meaning of loss.
With no models of grief
he didn’t know how to feel it himself
nor how to give solace,
not just lip service,
to those who had lost.
*
I cried for him.
How very sad, as a child
he didn’t know the love I knew.
He, a sensitive child,
in an icebox family
fraught with frigid emotion,
and warm, deep affection only
from his great-aunt, Dot.
*
He brought me pink tulips,
flowers of a contrite heart,
and held me close
and kissed me
with lips full of apologies
but I was the one
who felt sorry for him
for the years he knew not love.
*
Twenty-eight years ago
God told me “Love this man,
trust him and have faith in him,
and hold him to your heart.”
Many moons later, I love him light-years
more than the day we met
and in then-unimaginable ways
has our love strove for the stars.
*
He has brought me:
kindness and gentleness,
generosity of spirit,
goodness of heart,
and healing humor.
What I have taught him:
the glories of love
and agony of loss.
*
From the beginning
the seed of love was sown
for better or worse
deeply within the parched,
but fertile soil of my imperfect heart.
And he has cultivated the growth
of a stalwart, staid evergreen,
amid the blooming two-lips of forever love.
MOONSIDE 
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