Healing

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment


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Healing

Bend into the silence
Let it
Tell you much

Guard your heart
From bitterness 
While you journey
Into
A quiet, sacred place

Just as 
Blind men read
The world in
Bumpy Risen Braille
Cup your hand
Against your ears
Bend into peace
Again

Welcome each
Soft syllable
Let it sing
And heal

Inside the inner
Chambers
Quieting the fear

Gentleness
Speaks to you
In a holy hush
Peace
Amid the 
News
Noise wrapped around
The spinning world

Quite
Deafening

With
Tenderness
It appears
Cloaked in gentleness
Precision in each move

Now
Lift the bumpy, broken language
From a 3-D page
Read it through a
Grace-filled lens
Come heal our 
Brokenness

Awash in crimson stained
Mercy
Robed in
Hope 
As you slowly
Turn the page

Now
Listen
To
The quiet, what it  has to say
The poet
Introvert
The timid one
Afraid to add
Another voice 
To join
The
Popular debates

Lean in close
While
Silence adds a
Voice
Somehow, in some
Cryptic
And poetic way
Remain 
Hushed
To hear
No,
Really listen

Listen to the whispers
Decode unspoken words
That never make it
From their frightened
Lips

The words, the cries
Stuck
immobilzed

A blend of sadness
&
Pure joy 
Her world within a hurting world
Lies in
Layered silence
Buried in the dark

As ruins in Pompeii

Archivist
Unburies and unearths
Beauty from the ash

Cries
Whispered
Asking for
Sweet
Release
Remind us of the joy
Recall for us the beauty
Hidden in the ash

Weak, wounded
The message will break through

Listen to the silent ones
The meek
The mild
The child-like
The songstress, artist
Friend

Bend into the silence
Oh, learn from it 
Again

Silent night
Holy night
All was calm
All was bright
And will be once again

Silence bears
Breathes anew
Silence redeems
Have mercy
Teach us to do the same

Healing 
Come
Healing
Calm

Healing ride on sacred wings 
Born in humble beds of hay
And on a silent night
Oh
Healing come again

With Laura today at Playdates at The Wellspring

Swells

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

 

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Swells

Flounder-like, belly side down
Arms as elbowed paddles
Ten-toed fin, to guide her stern
She points her freckled nose
As dolphin do
Toward horizon’s
Faint thin line
Goal to nowhere
Far, far, away
As if to aim for nothing,
Or toward everything
Invisible to the eye
Every now and then
Covered by the pulsing salty ebb
Pulsing flow
The water’s wet heartbeat
Slower than her own

This aquatic journey
Finds her rolled, in seconds flat
Into a soggy silk cocoon
Tossed, her torso bent, curved
Into a salty spherical swell

The beginning of the giving in
A bit
And riding
With
And not against

The swells
Of good intent

Eyes now skyward
Focused
Even heavenward
She learns
From wave on wave
Those cotton white
Glistening
Mirrored on the sea
Yet dancing freely
Against the sky
No with

Yes, with
This is how she learned
To
Just
Float

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joining the folks at Tweetspeak for the poetry prompt: swell

Turning Corners

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

wpid-img_20140725_081535.jpgTurning Corners

Cancer came
Shadow-lurker
Stalker, thief
Took (euphemism for her thievery)
Hauled away some valuables
Uninsured, gone for good
Precious jewels, antiquities
Time laced in silver threads of
joy
Stories of the disease
Giving too
Hovering
Somewhere
Perhaps,
My eyes will see them
Once again

Around the corners of a rounded globe
Are wars,
beyond mere rumors
Rather, raw, real, raging
Robbing
My ears have heard of hidden
Gifts
Tucked  in the outskirts of the pain
Perhaps
My ears will behold the
Telling,
Once again

Dementia crept in
Beneath the shadows
Into the soul of those I love and loved
Stealing memories by the thousands
Robbing us of stories still not told

But I have held the gifts,
Frail, wrapped in parchment
In my ever-wrinkling hands

Gifts uncovered in the dark
Those revealed by light of day
I’ve held these too,
Too many to tell
Entitled
Redemptive love
Story without end, amen

Waiting captures me
Clothes me
Wraps me in robes of knowing
Assures me to

just

Turn the corner
Once,
Again
Touched by a ghost-like
garment passing by
a holy haunting
Threads of silky hope

Redemption clothes us
On the heels of waiting
Out of  moth-balls
I unwrap
Velvet, violet
Comfort from a garment
The ancient
Robe of holy peace

At last.

 

 

Joining Laura for Playdates at The Wellspring

 

The Bibliography

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

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The Bibliography 

I.

Archiving a life
by the edge of the sea
We search
For anything
That records all of this
Mirroring life
Buried in salt
Washed by the sea
We walk
Syncopated side steps
Forward
Then back
We track the slithering
Coast
Lined with debris
A field of antiquities
Offered up to me
For the remembering of this
Life
By the salty repository
He and I
Always together
Never far apart
Gathering up our days
In the wrinkled folds of flesh
Fingers unfurled
Hands, palm up
Receivers
Marking them
In shades of Olives

II.

Someone deemed it rare
A paradox
Copious amounts gathered up
In the hands of the
Careful
The cautious
An annotated bibliography
Marked, cataloged
Micro moments
Foot notes
Depression of toe and heel
Telling where we were
But not where we will
Go
Olive in hand
Shadowed by you

Writing in community with the folks at Tweetspeak for their Photo Play Prompt Portrait Of A Shell Sand And The Sea