The Unwrapping

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I was a ripper. A peaker. An unnoticing receiver. Noticing by default. The things under my nose. You can’t miss what lies in wait to capture you, hold you and wrestle you to the ground. By grace, we are entrapped by the beauty of surprise and ordinary miracles.

By grace, He holds our chin and turns our heads. With beauty.

We are the walking dead if we miss it all. I glanced a ways away and I was no longer there. I was gone. Hurled into the land of Alice’s world and a Narnia place.

I had to leave. Forgive me. The crowd was a cacophony. The china on chargers held me too. But for awhile. And then I left, to keep my peace. To go and find it. To hold fast to my soul and to open my eyes to the better banquet. One nestled in trees and leaves and lawns.

I was always an eaves-dropper. Picking up and honing in. Not missing the sounds surrounding a soul on the run. Even when I was barely awake.

And so I have some small gift. That I must unwrap. So that I may unwrap, the beauty.

Oh, how grievous I would be, if I had missed the blossom, as big as the Queen’s head or the Cheshire Cat. While dining on the finest of fine.

Seeing the shadows dance on white linen and spotless glass. Silver to the right and to the left.

I left to find more. Avoiding a melancholy grief.

Missing the divine, the holy, the huge?

Never unwrapping the gifts?

Oh how dreadful it would have been. To have never seen. Those ordinary, most extraordinary of things.

Awake At The Wheel: Eyes Open For Beauty, Wonder and Miracle

I have always been intrigued by the beauty of the middle places. The after birth and before the end. The in-between and still in process. And plays a role in this scavenger hunting and archiving. There is always more in the hidden places. Nuances are found in the unveiling, uncovering, and unwrapping.

We are all in the middle of making and doing. We are birthing projects, dreaming dreams, and living out the calling. We are seeing anew, forgetting the past, building bridges to broken places, moving on and healing wounds.

I fell into a place of slow wonder. And I am staying there. The South shows me well its old tradition of living and moving slow. She is the matriarch of my love affair with my new-found wide-awake-ness. I cannot travel back to a time of inattentive living.

I shall not fail to record, remember and ingest. I will not not live aware. I accept the invitation to open every gift of wonder. Every drop of beauty. I am headed into the days of the waning. When the memory fades. But I have come from a faded story. So I am ready to fight to see and record it all.

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I confessed to my daughter that I did not remember. Forgetting may be in my DNA. So for today I am recording well and I am searching like a woman in a desperate desert search for a cool we drink of ordinary life. The mirage of beauty is gone. Holographic beauty is reaching out and grabbing me by my senses.

I found a letter in a trunk. The one I keep of old and yellowed letters. Post marks from ’58 and forward through the years and through the times, forgotten. I can go diving into my past there. And I do. I am a stranger in my own understanding. In my remembering, the doing is dim. I am the stranger meeting a woman who is stranger too.

And I told my daughter that I do not remember if I went to the Eiffel Tower at three o’clock as the letter asked me to. A simple rendez-vous for a young woman. I do not remember. Yes, I was living in Paris at the time. And the letter, I explained was written in the days before cell phones and social media. He, an acquaintance traveling abroad, asked if we could meet. The letter leaves me wondering.

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I do not want to miss the recording of the living. The bignesses. Who misses towers in Paris and a rendez-vous in the heart of France. I want to record the intricate, miniscule parts of my life. The beauty, the miracle, the wonder of the small and ordinary will not escape the sieve of my collecting heart.

Determined to live awake at the wheel. I am paying attention. And life is grandiose in its slow and ordinary wonderment.

Join me. We will discover small things.
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Joining Laura Boggess

Extravagance

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Extravagance

These are the days of extravagance
Want and wanting, desire and desiring
Dim in a rearview mirror, malfunctioning
Objects of desire may appear smaller than they once were
Plenty erupts into abundance
Do not misread the meaning
(Grab and consult Webster if you must, Google it)

For I have looked the giver in her eyes
And touched her coal black skin, said no
And thank you a million times
Refused the gift to a fault
Desire to give out of what she had, burned between our hands
And history rewrote itself

The force with which she gave was mighty
And I was weakened by her might
Turnips and sweet potatoes, an olive branch
Apples for the pie ( she told me to bake)
My no’s were extravagant
Her yeses like steel

Church on the sidewalk
History in the remaking
A sliver of time which doesn’t make sense
Extravagant generosity of a stranger
Left me forever changed

She wore frailty as a badge of her living
My life of never-needing, never-wanting
Rose up like a geyser of guilt
Oh how rich the gift of a giver who has little

Blessed are the poor
Extravagance is a turnip the size of her heart

I walk with a limp, burdened by a heavy load
Shame of a hoarder
Heavy-ladened by the richness of
The gift
Restless
In search of the needy
Schooled on the side of the road by the one who
Knew
She the Samaritan
I, the ditch dweller

Apples woven, again
Into a story of love

Remaining In The Shallow Water

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Remaining In The Shallow Water

We push off
With both feet
Hot like two fiery embers
Smokin’ hot
From the splintered dock
Equipped wtih
Everything we’d need
Vienna Sausages
Lance Crackers
And Diet Coke
Iced down in the Coleman
Beside the beer
Along with plenty of desire
And hope
That this would be the day
We’d fight
He’d flail
Then lose
And we’d prevail
Conquerors of salty brackish seas
My love
And me
Dreamers
Dreaming of elusive trophies in our nets

And
At the end of day
Fatigued and wearied travelers
We
Arrive home now
All canned potables gone
Under a canopy of every shade of
Pinks and oranges
We’ve nothing
But a panoramic view
Of summer’s 
Sluggish setting sun

But hope 
And 
Yet
Now
We realize
That the one that got away

Would have sunk us
Capsized our little ship
And we
With wild desires and dreams
Seem glutenous
As we Monday morning
Quaterback
A bit

Now that we arrive
Back home
Tie up and wobble weary
Down the sun-bleached dock
We discover
From surveying our
Wet and empty nets

We are happier 
Having bagged
No treasures
Nothing bleeds
From the bent end of
Rod or reel and rusty hook

No noticeable triumph
With scales or gills
No victory
From our time 
Away at sea

Simply, home now
Empty handed

The treasure was
The journey

In our small
Blue-green wooden
Boat
Out on the great big salty
Sea
My man and me
Settling for nothing
Conquerors, we won the battle

We bagged 
Simplicity

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Joining my friends at Tweetspeak Poetry for their poetry prompt: The One That Got Away