The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

Deb, just popping in to say how much I love your entry. Reminds me of the limiting "virgin/mother/crone" feminine archetypes.

This line:
"Mom was damaged and lovely"
is especially beautiful in its honesty.

Thanks for sharing, welcome aboard

Deb -- no limit -- no rules -- we are poets!

Thank you, Tracy and Sharon. 


Sharon, among others, I love the bird poem. Tracy, your words and that of all the other writers here floor me at times. Love to you all!

This is a magical thread. I feel lifted and steadied by the truths and movement in all of the offerings here.


Enjoying everything!

~Deb

Dang Colm, #10 chilling, moving, haunting...

Hi Deb,
I enjoyed your first offering, it's warm and engaging, and there's a really nice flow to it.

Colm,

Re your latest poem, which reveals your understanding of the less fortunate.  As my Mum used to say, 'There but for fortune...'

Messages to people in 'secure hospitals don't always get passed on.  If someone in authority, even with the best of intentions, decides communications from outside may harm the patients mental state or recovery, it simply doesn't reach them.

Also the internet has too many 'nasty bastards' who play with others as if they were toys not human beings, so internet connection is always carefully rationed or totally denied.

There is also the possibility that the patient has, after that initial outreaching, had a change of heart and asked not to receive any messages from you.  In this case they always honour the patient's wishes.  I believe the prison system works pretty much the same way, but I understand they keep the messages on file in case of a change of heart.

Sometimes messages from 'home', no matter how well intentioned, just emphasise their isolation.  Sometimes it's easier for them to shut the door and adapt to the new regime.

So if you feel like dropping her an occasional email it may get through one day.

Gyppo   

ROUNDED SHOULDERS

At first light,
a squirrel sheds its silhouette
the way a starlet would a drape,
descending stair by stair
from a landing
that is suddenly
fire escape,
now ladder.

Deb, good to see you here.

Mothers wear many hats,but sometimes, for family, that single label is the skin which encapsulates all.

Sometimes that solitary word on a tombstone may be a distillation of the countless words and memories which simply don't and can't fit a simple slab.

Gyppo

Nicole,

The 'squiggles' are usually the first movement I see in a morning through my bedroom window, whilst still lying in bed   Just occasionally an early flying crow or magpie will arrow past still sleepy eyes en route to it's first meal of the day, but usually it's squirrel callisthenics  as first one appears and then others start to chase it around. 

Often right on that momentary cusp when night's monochrome images change imperceptibly to daylight colours.

Gyppo

Sacralization
Her skin remains untouched, in a space unbreathed.
She cultivates aloneness in the half-dark just inside
a circle of candle light. At night she sits an arm’s length
from a window that looks out, allows no look within.
She reads aloud from her diary, her voice barely
rising and falling, a shallow chant, more a memory than real.
An ancient oak, her nearest companion, dares to shape
rhymes and harmonies with this her constant prayer.
Once, there had been a love living beyond this imagination.
One whose heart sought rather than found.
As it is with veins and arteries his horizons expanded,
hers contracted and she withdrew to incantations,