Soul Friend
Category: Inspiration from others
Perspective
I have stared long enough at the glowing flat rectangles of computer screens. Let us give more time for doing things in the real world...plant a plant, walk the dogs, read a real book, go to the opera. ~ Edward Tufte
Paradox
I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. Maxine Hong Kingston
Freedom?
“If a woman can’t be trusted with a choice, how can she be trusted with a baby?”
Study and protect our living Constitution, or ignorance and manipulation will prevail. Legal precedence matters.
America
AMERICA Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. Claude McKay, 1921 Shenandoah Literary
Garden Dream
Graffiti
“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.”
Originally shared on Random People Quotes Project.
In This Dream
IN THIS DREAM They’re here! I rip the package, pull sheer stocking over toes, ankle, shin, beyond the line where prosthesis extends my leg. This hosiery will animate prosthetic limbs, transform molded resin into skin, skirts soon fluttering along my thighs as I skip on these feet, attract with these calves, no longer rolling on wheels or hiding my legs from pitying stares. I will be normal. Yet as I examine my stockinged leg, I discover the turquoise seam marking the boundary of prosthesis and flesh. Deformed, dependent, tricked by desperate hope, I fold and cry, knowing I’ll never look or walk like others. Perched on a nearby boulder, my Soul-body marvels at the powerful wings unfurling from between my hunched shoulders, grief shrouding me from their luminous tips as they rise toward the sun.
Thank you to the editors of riverbabble for first publishing this poem.
Reborn
I was startled to see this cicada emerge from its “skin” on our outdoor chair at the beginning of the proliferation of cicadas that spread through the United States in 2021.
Memory
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou
Elizabeth Oakley Weaver 