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Dear Ms. Dickinson By John Grey QuailBellMagazine.com Yes Emily, there is a variety to triumphs. When it rains, there's triumph in being inside, closeted in a warm dry room. And triumph too in making it to that awning. huddled together with others, calm and patient until the shower subsides. What of the triumph of the umbrella, the bull-lighter dynamic when canopy blithely dodges the downpours' thrusts. I even know of a triumph where a man stands alone in nothing but shirt and slacks and good shoes and it doesn't bother him in the least that he's drenched through to the skin. He'd even dance in that rain, as the song goes, if he could only find a suitable partner. He's holding out for you, Emily. But when do you ever leave your house, your century? #Unreal #Poetry #EmilyDickinson #EkphrasticPoetry #BreakFree Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Walk in the Woods Editor's Note: This previously appeared in a slightly different version in The Statesman. (A confused montage of images and musings on the agony of growing up and apart)
“Ring-a-ring-a-roses, A pocket full of posies; Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down” The leaves weren’t emerald and the sun wasn’t gold but when I remember them, I think of jewels. The forest was dark and misty, a ghostly breeze trailing through the emptiness and a lone bird singing a love song to the wind. I pretended to be Little Red Riding Hood that day, in a red lace dress and ballerinas, but I knew that inside, I wasn’t. I pretended the mossy path would lead me to a cottage, the one from my storybooks but I also knew that it wouldn’t, that I was walking deeper and deeper to a darkness I couldn’t escape from. But I was wrong. There was a path— ancient stone steps leading somewhere, surely not nowhere and sunlight was struggling to get through the canopy overhead, and causing dust motes to dance, like glittering pixies. What I remember the most was the utter peace I felt, the sense of oneness with the summer air, the silence of the woods, the cool sunshine that trickled in from behind the pine leaves and cast pale shadows on the broken stones entangled with moss and ivy. Yellow and white butterflies flitted about and though I could not see them, I could hear the bees buzzing in the bushes. The cracked stone steps I’d chanced upon led me all the way to an abandoned temple atop a hill. As I relieve the sheer excitement of it, I recall my childlike imagination conjuring tales of dead nuns and monks, of ghost children following my footsteps the way I followed the trail of a yellow butterfly. I did not uncover any treasure that day. The temple was as I’d imagined—lonely, desolate, smelling of oldness, like a forgotten souvenir from a long-ago but long-cherished trip. I knew that I wasn’t the first to come here. In my mind, I liked to think that the place was perfect, that little white blossoms peaked out from the cracks in the stone that the crumbling walls were carved with runes in a language that was long dead. That way, the forest and the temple could be a magical place, and I, the child granted access to the forbidden realm. But in truth, cigarette stubs, food packets, torn plastic lay scattered haphazardly on the ground and fading alphabets scrawled on stone walls—the remnants of the wanderers who’d come to this forgotten place before me and left a sign, a memory so that the next person who came would acknowledge them, their long-dead presence for the briefest while. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Thoughts, Judgement, and Lucidity By Charice Cejas QuailBellMagazine.com A thought occurred to me concerning the lucidity in which my thoughts occur. Could my judgments possibly not be what they were in my earliest of years, those in which all appears in an air of simplicity, an air that surely clears in the presence of maturity? And could it be the truth that those well in their youth thrive in untouched minds and indulge in a sweet tooth for new discoveries and finds? Yet, when they pass from new to old, just as their thoughts become too bold, their minds—as sand to precious pearl-- are shaped into an ancient mold and sent to understand the world. And the way they once perceived is left behind and unbelieved, written off as imagination, only to be, again, achieved in elderly mental degradation-- the rise and fall of every peak. And, for those whose minds are unique, could their thoughts, years ahead, be heard as truth their thinker speaks and valued before that thinker’s dead? #Unreal #Poetry #Thoughts #Growth #Life #Rhythm #SpokenWord Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. |