English: An underwater shot looking up at a palm tree and clouds distorted by the ripples on the surface. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ripples, a chain reaction,
dominoes tripping design in relief,
a smile, a frown,
someone’s joy, someone’s grief.
Turn right, turn left,
move straight ahead,
journeys far-flung from each other,
you’re there, I’m here instead.
A single shift of the eyes,
a sideways glance,
I missed something, saw another,
changed the fortunes of chance.
@Janet Mitchell, January 2013
I always thought,
naively so,
you’d always be there,
Never occurred to me
so blind,
that someday you’d go.
So familiar,
your presence:
you brew the morning coffee,
at seven, a good-bye kiss,
but lingering behind,
ever your essence.
Leaving was always
a temporary thing,
off to work, then home,
never doubted your return,
until that one, piercing,
unexpected ring.
Wrong number, wrong person,
you’ve always come home,
You were just here,
plans for dinner at eight,
you said you’d never leave,
I’d never be alone.
Oh, I forgot,
there was something I had to say
I meant to ask you,
will you pick up some milk?
Your key in the lock, anytime, now:
you’d never go today.
Can I reel back the time?
Can I put the clocks on hold?
Can I tell the phone not to ring?
Hold that one last morning kiss?
We haven’t had our chance, yet,
To grow old.
© Janet Mitchell, July 2012
home is where the heart is (Photo credit: alltagskunst)
It feels like I’m goin’ home again,
that place in my heart
where I’ve always been.
Not so much a place,
but more a state of mind,
I feel like I’m goin’ home again.
Far from being lost in a foreign land,
there’s that place in my heart,
and I’m goin’ back again.
Feelin’ the dirt beneath my feet,
smells like my heart’s land
that place I’ve always been:
comfort wrapped around me,
a well-worn robe:
conformed to my body through wear.
softened like my soul,
and always there,
from way back when,
way back from when I first began:
I feel like I’m goin’ home again.
©Janet Mitchell, July 2012
You mesmerize me,
hypnotize me,
sing melodies into my soul.
You rain inspiration into me
when I’m running on empty.
You gaze at me
and you see
straight through my ravaged soul,
enrapture me
infinitely,
saturate me with love.
You walk into the room,
I’m not alone.
My soul lifts
from my body, and
I see you from above, then
drifting gently down,
you draw me to you,
softly as a feather.
I’m slipping into you,
where I belong.
© Janet Mitchell, July 2012
Mountain – Alaska’s Denali (Photo credit: blmiers2)
Eon: Half a billion years or more
Era: Several hundred million years
Epoch: Tens of millions of years
Age: Millions of years
Love: No-Time, eternity
******
Eons before and beyond my mountains
dare I go
to my own intimidating walls?
Those walls of mine, which
have taken eras to construct.
For what reason?
Perhaps to protect,
but from what, I’ve forgotten.
Perhaps I shouldn’t make this climb?
Perhaps I’ll stumble, perhaps I’ll fall.
Strange that what I fear most,
I’ve taken ages to build,
solid mountain, rock by rock:
my fortress.
I draw a ragged breath,
then release
an even more ragged one.
Where else would I go
besides to those mountains
that loom before me,
daring me,
each crevice intimately known,
each crevice painfully hewn.
I could go to valleys, deeper,
where pain reaches further than ever before.
But I’m sure I’ve already been there:
So, trembling, I begin.
I think I’m looking for love,
for no-time.
That place where I cannot discern
where no-time and love blend,
where we are all one.
Without judgment.
Fully accepting.
That pause between thought,
between breaths,
that place where is-ness hangs in its place:
simple awareness.
The climb, the burn,
excruciating at times,
and I, sometimes damning it,
prefer to abandon this quest
for something
that might not even be,
prefer to descend further
into painful
(but familiar)
valleys deep below:
far deeper than I’ve ever been.
But within, I know.
Ah, the vision: clearer.
The stride: surer.
The mountain: nearer.
Hands, loving, meet my own:
what a revelation to me!
Release of all those ages –
could it be?
So simple,
the merging of my mountains
and me.
Could it be?
The pain of eons, eras, epochs and ages
are escaping me:
separation between us
evaporates into love,
into no-time.
Spills over into all that is:
cannot be contained.
My mountain, all along,
a sparkling, glittering, fountain of being,
waiting for my touch,
that says we are one.
We’ve merged into no-time, no-space, into love.
Stretched before and within, and
now I see:
I am, we are love.
© Janet Mitchell, July 2012
Eternity, as symbolized by Armenians since ancient times. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Eternity,
timelessness,
devoid of measure and space.
Linear brain
devises a way
to somehow exact a place
where all exists
(where no thing is)
mortal mind insists
on one point,
a place,
on one moment,
a time,
infinitely huge and small,
stretching out endlessly in a line,
forgetting time
is three-dimensional,
(yet, not at all),
only a construct, a tool of our mind,
a vain attempt to
define what is
everything and nothing,
forever and never:
we cannot comprehend.
So we build a box,
a tidy, measured square,
time marking our lives in
seconds, minutes, hours,
and years spent there.
If not for us looking
it would not be,
but for our eyes
there’d be nothing to see,
but for our ticking clocks
there’d be only one moment:
this eternal Now.
© Janet Mitchell, June 2012
creativity (Photo credit: smrisk)
My brain went dry,
creativity flew out the window,
winged off to somewhere,
but it’s still there,
hiding,
waiting for me to find it again,
‘tho I don’t know when.
Phrases keep flitting across my brain,
but fitting them together
seems to be a pursuit in vain,
will it ever come back?
Have I lost the knack?
One of these days, I’ll uncover
the words that seem to hover
just out of my reach.
Artists linger over a thought,
seemingly without meaning,
they ferment there without coherence
’til in one moment they coalesce,
begin to make some sense,
and then they take on
a life of their own,
usually when least expected,
they dance to an independent tune
spring to life when most neglected,
sparked by a smell or a word or a vision.
No need hunting them down,
they’ll come,
most often without reason.
© Janet Mitchell June 2012
Musical score example of guitar fingering / string numbers in stave notation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The music played in my head,
rang in my ears,
on the radio,
ran through my body,
coursing through my brain,
and, I sang it silently, solo.
Closing my eyes
I let it take over,
and climbed up on the notes:
they danced and they played
and filled me with passion,
that place where only love floats.
I grew in crescendos,
shrank in pianissimo,
felt the plucky touch of staccato.
I rose on rapid eighth tones
and coasted to a slow roll.
This rock and roll cantata.
©Janet Mitchell, May 2012
Come play with me,
come run with me,
come dance with me in the sun!
Run up the hills of heather,
go bounding down and around,
I’m not sure I can anymore,
my body’s just not the same,
“Oh, yes, my dear, we can”,
you said,
as you pointed to your head,
“We’re only twenty-one”.
Come play with me,
frolic with me,
roll about in the sand.
In our memory we can go there,
again and again and again.
I’ll rock in my rocking chair,
and you will keep my beat,
before you know it,
we’ll be there,
frolicking in love’s heat.
I love you, I love you, I love you,
and that’s where we will go,
to play and run and frolic and laugh,
love giggles that only we know.
“We’re ageless”, you said,
“and here we are,
only twenty-one,
though our bodies are eighty-four,
nothing can take that youthful glow
so let us go play in the sun”.
© Janet Mitchell, May 2012
All those years ago,
when you first touched my hand
and said it was then you knew:
we thought we did,
but there was much more
we’d yet to traverse through.
For all those years,
you’ve been my rock,
and, sometimes, I, yours,
memories made and
to be made, with all of life’s
twists and turns,
It was first, you, who knew,
and now this I know:
Our hands belong intertwined.
No matter, my dumpy mood,
my discouragement, my joyful elation,
always, that twinkle in your eyes,
that spark with the gentle touch
of my hand,
never escapes my mind.
Why you’ve never left, when
perhaps I would have gone,
I cannot comprehend.
But each time I turn
to catch a glimpse,
there you are again.
You’ll take my hand, that same gentle way,
“Come, give me a hug, my love”,
And our arms wrap us together,
that calm oasis, that wordless bond
that once, we thought we knew,
was just the whisper of forever.
©Janet Mitchell, May 2012
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