How You Love Me

January 25, 2013January 25, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 12 Comments

After a very long “sabbatical” from Lisa Jo Baker’s Five Minute Friday’s, I am joyously diving in today, again. And the prompt today is again. Writing for Five Minutes, with an ounce or two of grace.

The words regenerate my soul

They speak life and love into my deepest parts

Life springs from them, like watering seeds of need in me

Once is never enough, its like the steady stream of mountain rivulets that feed the ocean mighty strong

The repetitions of the beautiful, of love poured out

Tell me again like Jack and Jill and all the early once upon a times we read as children and to the children

Say it again, soft and low, long and sweet

There is no sameness, dull or colorless odorless in the repeating

Feed me like open-beaked bird who needs seed on seed on seed, at feeder long and wanting

Blanket me fresh, my cold and weary soul needs the warming words from your tongue

Tell me again and again and again

Just tell me how you love me.

The Fear Of Forgetting, The Art of Remembering

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

She recalls the smallest detail from years ago.

She recalls the long ago.

And she forgets the half a moment away.

Mystery in the mind, mystery in the aging

of memory.

A life gets blurred like watercolors on a canvas.

Color present, color faded, lines and detail run away and off the page

Until a version of blurry new is present in the present.

And what will I recall.

What will I remember.

Will the written anchor memories of each, of the three, the best, the challenges

I dream a dream of capturing it all in bell jar, lid light,

In marked detail , the love and laughter

Growing up at my feet, at my bosom for years

If you add them, all the days between the three

It would make one old child, but they are three

And will the words help bury memories, encase them in a time capsule

Just in case the mind and memory fade as it does and as it did for her

She says remember when you and how could I, barely I do, I barely recall

I the child she the mother of this obscure event, no event is unworthy of recording

All are worthy, all are worthy.

If I write and when I write may it be a doubled effort to recall

The smallest moments in their, our, this life.

Branding, blazing all the breathes in ink, in stone, the sacred ones

The what He gives, the what we take

No it is what we receive, and remember and offer back

By recording, all the moments in an effort

To remember.

She remembers the smallest detail from long long ago.

May I remember the smallest details from long long ago.

And begin to see through her eyes, a glimpse, a slant of how

She saw and how she sees

That is grace.

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Joining Emily at Imperfect Prose for her one word prompt this week…Mother.

What I Am Working On, Still

January 23, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

When You Speak

Poetry Calls

And I tell myself…we can do this but man oh man is it hard and now I know why I write. There is comfort behind these words. And it is frightening and vulnerable out in front of the shield they provide, the comfort they give.

And I wanted it to be imperfect and man is it.

But I wanted there to be a heartbeat and a breathing, living pulse put to the words from my heart.

You may not hear it but they both are there.

Grace and Peace to you. Thanks for large measures of grace for “What I Am Working On, Still.”

The words bring peace and solace and more, they are a calling. My family needs me now. To fix dinner and make things neat and clean and orderly. They need me to be and love and embrace and nurture.

And I am working on loving them, raising them, guiding them and mothering them, still.

{The Patient One made me the beautiful fire in the fireplace before he left to do what The Patient One does.}

What I Am Working On

January 23, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 11 Comments

When that word showed up on my doorstep that day, I embraced it and said it was mine. At least for the year.

And there are many different mediums and forms and formats. Suddenly being flat and one dimensional as a writer and as a struggling poet has reached a restless place.

I cried out to a fellow blogger and shared with her my heart’s desire to produce my first video blog post (VLOG) and she spoke back.

A community is a living breathing being. And we are in community together. She reached out to me and said “I can help you.”

At the simplest level of our humanness is that desire to be heard and cared for. For a cry to have a response.

And as an artist and writer we may need to have someone come alongside as a fellow writer and say, I can help you with your craft. To develop it in a way you are dreaming about. Hoping for.

I am flat, with an avatar and only written words to the readers of my blog. I have a longing to put my voice and my clumsy hand gestures and my southern accent to my poetry. I want to be a “three D” me, if only once. Or maybe even more than once.

So this is what I am working on. A short little vlog post with my voice quivering and my poetry shaky wobbly on my lips. My accent revealing a bit of where I am from and my heart coming through in my word choices.

This is me now, in a flat screen back lit world. But this lover of words longs to give them a different vehicle. And send them off riding into the arms of her readers.

So I am off to work on my project and to pick a poem to read.

Have I told you lately how you bless me?

May you be encouraged today in all that you are lead to do, in work, in love, in relationships, and in service.

(Photo courtesy of Laura Hutto, Shades of Gray Photography

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