Tag: poetry

Really, One Word? From Me? Yes !

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

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I thought of a million reasons why I wouldn’t choose one word.

Actually, that’s not true.

I didn’t give it much thought at all.

But then… the idea sung to me sweetly and the word screamed loud and strong and wouldn’t stop.

Well yes I danced for awhile around the words that I want to shape me and shape my living this year. If I tell you my heart I bare my soul. If I bare my soul you see a seeking, wanting, hungry me.

If you see me there, that is where the real and the vulnerable are and didn’t I always want to live there, really?

I want to Praise more and Love more. I want to embrace possibility and potential. I want to be healed and whole. I want to enter in, not stay on the fringe in fear. I want to be brave and make new friends and serve God. In everything.

Simply, I want an abundant life. Serving and loving and living out of a place of extravagant possibility.

I long for poetry, lots of poetry. And I want to dare to sharpen the eyes of my soul to see beauty, all beauty. The beautiful in everything.

And the word was set on repeat, washing away in the inner chambers. Though I really had no plans or desire to wrap a year of living around a word.

But it focuses my soul. And I fell in love. And it felt like a calling. So I opened the door, well cracked it really. And in came the rush and excitement of  art.

The colors, the sounds, the whimsy, the creativity, the nuance and the wonder.

And when I framed the desires and callings on my spirit it looked and felt and sounded like this, to my soul.

I want to know the art of worship and the art of praise, anew.

My soul longs to experience the art of loving and serving those in my world, my family and community. The friends I have not even met.

I want to seek and find the art of seeing  beauty around me, catching the moment at just the right time, when the light hits just so and the smile turns up on a face in that oh so subtle  way.

I am longing to see with my camera, the art of capturing life and living and creation, anew.

With art as my frame of living, my frame of reference, my hope is that I will be challenged to live fully and abundantly in all that I do. Without fear, without anxiety, without settling for just so.

Wrapping a year of days with art as the rudder, my hope is to encounter all not half. Full not empty. Strong, not weak. Brave not timid.

Embracing the art of abundant living through reconciliation, healing, forgiveness and embracing this one life.

Will you join me as I eat my words and choose one word?

Will you walk through a year of poetry and prose, photography and faith, with me. Looking to the Ultimate Creative, Artist God, all the while.

You make the art of my life so much richer.

Off to the land of artful living; dancing, singing, all the way there. Won’t you come along? Shaking the dust off as we go. Cleansing and washing our days in new.

These words of Pablo Picasso sing it all so sweet and true:

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life

art one

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Linking with the one word community.

Catch Me, I’m Falling Into The Arms of Possible

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 6 Comments

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                                               Catch Me, I’m Falling

Through the veil, around the bend, past the point of no, not, never

Beyond the beginning, against a wall of crumbled wonder

She scales the fence of dreaming

Clenching the ledge of maybe

Jaw, fist tight

Climbing over the stoned tower of cannot

And drops dead weight into the arms of the possible

Caught, held, saved

By the net of her day dream.

Oh the sweet joy of wrapping and sending and writing with wordcandy.me. Join me and other sweet bloggers as we sprinkle the world with poetry, photography, and images. Won’t you take a peak at all the beauty there. Just visit wordcandy.me  to send words and images to people in your world.

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Tell Me A Story

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

grafting trees

Tell Me A Story

tell me a story all covered and cloacked in miracle and love

hope and wonder, the starring roles

tell me a story all colored in bright, shaded in laughter loud and so long

start near the end where things are closed, grafted in love and tender delight

each stands alone and each one merges in love with the others

no open unendings, no unfinished business

no, add the happily everafters all day long

or even everafters will do, they’ll do

tell me a story all knitted and sewn by hand in love

stitches of  tender mercies  mixed with intimate whispered i love yous

and tell me a story

i won’t miss a word

of family present bound by blood, tears and  love

the one where they are joined together so very tight

all wrapped in bright shiny, like packages with bows

gifts from Good Giver, presents of love

stop at the good parts, rest there awhile, turn your page slowly

rush not, don’t hurry

please tell it slow and steady in every detail

rest and pause often, stop at the good parts

savoring the best places and times

tell me a story of love and forgiveness

tell me a story of family redemptive

tell me a story, uniquely mine

The Land Where The Unknowns Live – (The Power of The Wind)

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Cracking the door open a smidge and peeking back in for a moment or two. Oh the challenge of keeping the writers quiet with their paperless canvas, when all the world is swirling and brimming and blustering and shining.

Voiceless it cries,
Wingless flutters,
Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

The Land Where The Unknowns Live

the mt storms, the wind

She sailed her boat on the seas of life where the winds blew white capped waves

Deep cracks and crevices on broken seas crept over her vessel’s sides

She sailed her craft under a sky so grey, with tears on cusp of breaking edge

Salty, stockpiled and ready to roll

Stealing salt from the tops of waves

And she sailed her ship, solo, so alone

To a land where the unknowns lived

Under night dark skies, painted  charcoals, ebonies,  and slates

Highlighted in battleship greys

Mirroring the melange of a heart and soul

And the sails they flapped and flailed and feinted, tattered and torn

So weak and wobbly worn

Ripped under the power and might of the storms

The swirling howling honking sounds came

And the all arounds blew

Under its gale-force currents of power and might

The breakables broke and the sediment shifted

While the trees they snapped, the roots gave way

As the wind tears all that’s shallow and weak

And the limbs bent, broke, tumbled, tossed

Then felled

As the howling power, like a runaway train

Brought the loose things loose while the winds swept the land

And carried things off in a current of cleansing

As the wind blew through, cutting a jet black night

But oh the morning it brings the new

A cleansing of a dark and broken soul

And rolls back all black

And saves the tears for some

Other day

And shines the light of Joy on all dark

As the sun shines radiant through the trees

The wind blows fresh through the cheeks puffed full

Of Hope through the land where the unknowns live

So she mends her sails, or did He mend them for her

And  re-rigs her boat, or did He repair that too

Her working parts and pieces

Sending her off on a journey new

On a sea of redemptive swells

Where the pitch and toss

And the windswept new bring Hope to a journey, new

Fueled by the breeze so gentle and soft

Of a kind and whispering wind

Touching tender the cheeks of the smiling face

Of the land where the unknowns live.