Choice and Action (A Poem)

poetry

Joy is a choice.
Love is an action.
How can you choose
Joy when you’re drowning?
What loving action can you take
when your soul is fighting to survive?

I escape from a self-inflicted prison,
now able to see
to breath
but still hurt by hits
fired from one who knows
where the wounds will be effective.

Still I will love
and find a way to choose joy.
The hurt will heal.
I will not cage my caring or my calling.
Joy is a choice I am choosing.
Love is an action I will do.

Free Lobster (A short Story)

writing

You woke up tired with a headache. Yes, it is ten in the morning, but you don’t want to get out of bed. It is cloudy, cold, and sad outside your bed. You stay in bed there for a bit longer which grows into another hour in bed. That is when you drag yourself out of bed, slowly make it down to your kitchen. The  coffee pot fights with you and the pancakes you are making take longer than you want. Once your meal is ready you watch one of your favorite television shows even though you know you have things to do. You tell your self, “It’s Saturday, it is okay to relax.”  The show ends and you now have to rush to get ready.

It’s ten minutes after noon and you are out the door. You drive towards the beach and hope that there is a fire pit available, since your friend has told you to be there before noon to get the fire pit. You arrive at the beach and smile. There is one pit left. You did not fail and even had a nice morning.

You walk the long beach to the one pit without the clutter of people and their things. It is not until you are near it that you see why it is abandoned without a person to claim it. Sand from the beach was piled into it until the sand created a table top. There was no room for fire or anything else besides the sand.

Now, do you sit and claim the pit no one wanted or take your chance that some one will leave by the time your church has its gathering.  You decide to stay and ask a friend to bring a shovel. You then ask another and another,  until someone finally has a shovel in a town where hardly anyone uses a shovel.

Once you have a plan you sit and relax.You take out your kindle to read a book. That is when you realize you kindle only has 20 percent of its battery left. You read the book trying to ignore the fact that the battery is draining. It drains fast and soon the computerized voice tells you so. You read on hoping to get farther in the book that you are just now getting attached to. Finally the battery is too far into the red for your liking so you turn it off.

As the wind blows and you start to get chilled. You are now thankful that you have a pair of leggings to go under your skirt and a cardigan to go over your tank top. As you wrap your self up a young lady walks over with a shovel in her hand. She tells you that you can use the shovel to which you respond with a grateful, “Thank you,” as your leg gets stuck in your legging and you fall over. With a smile you accept the shovel and start to dig out the fire pit.  It does not take long before a fire get fit.

After returning the shovel you sit and wait. You look at your phone to see what is going on in the world and see that you still have hours before the person with the wood will show up and another hour before the fire is supposed to actually start. There is a notebook and Bible in your duffle bag.

The  notebook is what is taken from your bag, but nothing besides a few lines in the shape of the beach’s life guard station is drawn on the pages. Not a single word is written before you put it back in the yellow and blue plaid duffle bag.

There is more waiting and people watching. A few people ask you, “Are you saving the fire pit?” They ask as if there would be another reason your blue sheet is stretched out next to the fire pit in question. A woman looking for a pit for a sixteen year old’s birthday party comes by, but their gathering is happening at the same time and with a large amount of people. Still more people ask you if you are saving the pit that should be obvious that you are saving and that you dug out.

Around three o’clock an older gentleman who looks as if he tries to stay healthy walks over. “Is there anyway we can share this pit?”

You tell him something along the lines that it may be possible and the two of you start to figure out if it actually is. Once it is decided that your parties will not clash it is decided that you will share the pit that you have saved for almost 3 hours with this doctor man. That is when he tells you that he will share his meal with you. For a moment you want to tell him it’s not necessary, but before you can he tells you what he is cooking. He and his doctor friends bought lobster, red beautiful lobster. The seafood that belongs to the other coast. The shellfish that your home has, the delicious food that you have not had in the shell for a long time.

He then leaves to get his things and your roommate shows up. She talks about her day and you tell her about what just happened. The guy comes back and you talk to him a little but mostly focus on the roommate that has joined you.

More doctors and their spouses come trickling towards the fire. Soon their fire is going and they are finding amusement in cooking their lobster. You do not want to intrude, so you talk and focus on your roommate and her friend that shows up.

Your roommate does not stay for too long though. She needs to eat something, so once the lobster is almost done she leaves. You are than called over to be one of the first to enjoy the amazing food that they prepared.  One man, that is about your age, so around late twenties or early thirties  asks you if you need help as you crack the arms off and dislocate the tail for the head. You both smile as he realizes you know what you are doing. Still you let him help you cut the shell. The other cut the shells off the other lobsters which seems so foreign to you. What about the crackers that squeezes the  shell until it breaks?

You figure they had their way of doing it and you had your way. Everyone is enjoying themselves and you are having free lobster with good people. No matter what happens from that point on, you had free lobster because you shared what you could.

 

This is a true story about my last Saturday.

Flowing Thoughts of a Poetic Mind

writing

I’m going to let my thoughts flow out. I hope you do not mind the random ramblings of a lone dreamer, lost in her own heart. It was tightened up for so long that I grew to really miss it. I tried to feel it and share it but my heart was locked far away among the elastic bands of stress and worried. Chained behind what other people said and did around me.  My heart was bolted down to the walls of my consciousness, just beyond my reach, where I could not free it.

Yet I tried. I tried to express the stress that weighed me down. I tried to write about what was wrong, but I could not express. I could not find the words to shout that I had lost the thing I hold so dearly. The one thing that makes me myself was trapped and locked by the world around and I could not get to it.

It started rationally, yet quickly. I had to change my life, move to a new home. I had to unpack and be settled. Yet, settling did not happen. There was something that I forgot to take with me, some how in the busyness of life I forgot where my heart belonged. Still I knew it was around, until one day I did not. One day after weeks had passed I looked for myself, my heart and it was gone. My focus on work, and writings, and doings, and goings, and everything else that seemed so important had locked away my heart, my deepest being, until I was a stressed human with no true identity.

Funny how you can lose who you are so fast and hardly even notice. Something so valuable to us all is so easily lost, like a golden band worn on a finger or a diamond stud worn in your ear.

Thankfully I unlocked my heart and threw off the chains that held it away from me. Happiness and relief overwhelmed me, because I was me, I was whole and I am loved. You can not feel true love when your heart is chained down with stress and worries. So now with my heart freed I will dance and share the beauty that a freed heart sees.

The moral of the story is don’t lock your heart away with the stresses and worries of this world or you will lose something so beautiful, so magical and the one thing that makes you who you are. Let your heart be free at least a little each day.

I hope you enjoyed this and have a great day.

Oh and if you look at the categories you should be able to tell I have no idea what category this goes in. 

At the Windmill (a poem)

poetryThere is a little cafe near my house that I believe I am becoming a regular at. Today I went by myself and had breakfast. I decided to write a little as I waited. This is one of the poems I wrote while enjoying their food. It really is a great place.

With painted wall,

warm and inviting

art hangs welcoming guest

saying be who you are

do what you will

and enjoy the good that is served

 

With the sky on the ceiling

bright and pleasing

curtains hang to welcome guest

saying come near or far

do what you will

and enjoy the food that is served

 

So I write and dream

sitting in the corner so I can watch

the couples eat

The students study

and an other lone female reading the paper

I sit, watch and writing

doing what I will

and enjoying the food that is served.

For you

Like a roaring river caught,

Like a devastating storm stopped,

Like a burning fire in a jar,

my soul was for you.

You released the flood waters of my heart

You control the storm inside my mind.

And you tell me how to burn.

You show me your way.

You show me my way to you Lord.

You open my heart,

you unlock my mind,

and free my soul,

all so that I can love you more.

Let me pour out for you

so that you can fill me up again.

Let me be emptied by you

so that I know where I stand.

Lord, your the lover of my soul;

the only one worth living for.

I was a roaring river caught

and you unleashed me,

for your glory.

I was a devastating storm,

to my own being,

but you calm the rage

that laid deep inside of me.

I was a spark in the night

before you showed me how to burn;

now I burn for you.

only for you, Lord.

Now I live for you

only for you, Lord.