Letting Go

 

Source: Poetry for the Soul on Facebook

PINK FLOYD - A Pillow Of Winds - Meddle

 

A Pillow of Winds

A cloud of eiderdown draws around me
Softening the sound
Sleepy time when I lie with my love by my side
And she's breathing low
And the candle dies

When night comes down, you lock the door
The book falls to the floor

As darkness falls and waves roll by
The seasons change, the wind is warm

Now wakes the owl, now sleeps the swan
Behold a dream, the dream is gone

Green fields, a cold rain is falling in a golden dawn

And deep beneath the ground
The early morning sounds and I go down

Sleepy time when I lie with my love by my side
And she's breathing low
And I rise like a bird in the haze
When the first rays touch the sky
And the night wings die

If God Didn't Say It...

 

Some of you didn’t just hear a lie…

you agreed with it.

You’ve been calling yourself

what God never called you.

Rejected.

Too much.

Not enough.

Unworthy.

And now you’re carrying it like it’s truth.

But it’s not.

God doesn’t contradict Himself.

And His Word is clear about you.

1 Peter 2:9

“You are a chosen people…”

So if what you’re believing

doesn’t line up with what He said…

it’s not your identity.

It’s something you need to tear down.

2 Corinthians 10:5

“Take every thought captive…”

Not every thought is yours to keep.

Source: Coffee with Starla on Facebook

Carol Kaye

She played the bassline on the most-played song of the 20th century. Her name wasn't on the record.

The 1966 album cover shows five young men on a California beach. The woman who actually played bass on half the tracks is nowhere in the photograph.

This wasn't an accident. It was industrial policy.

The Illusion

You bought the record. You read the sleeve. You saw the band holding their instruments on television. You assumed they were playing what you heard.

That assumption built a billion-dollar industry.

The Beach Boys. The Monkees. Sonny and Cher. The Righteous Brothers.

The story we were sold was simple: talented teenagers walk into a studio, plug in, and magic happens. They press the vinyl. The songs hit radio. The band goes on tour.

That story is fiction.

The Factory

Los Angeles in the 1960s wasn't about art. It was about manufacturing.

Radio stations demanded constant rotation. Labels couldn't wait six months for a band to rehearse an album.

Behind soundproof studio doors, a rotating group of session players handled the instruments. They were called The Wrecking Crew.

They arrived at Western Recorders at 8 AM. They drank stale coffee from paper cups. They recorded three complete albums for three different artists before sunset.

At the center of this machine sat Carol Kaye — a thirty-something mother of three holding a Fender Precision bass.

From 1957 to 1973, she played on an estimated 10,000 recording sessions.

Being invisible wasn't unusual for her. It was Tuesday.

The Sound of Everything

When you hear Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," you're hearing Carol Kaye's fingers.

The descending bassline on the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice"? Carol Kaye.

The acoustic guitar intro to "La Bamba"? Her.

Mission: Impossible theme? Her.

"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" — the most-played song of the 20th century? Her bassline.

The records sold tens of millions of copies. They defined the decade.

Record companies paid her a flat union rate: $55 for three hours.

The erasure wasn't a conspiracy. It was standard operating procedure.

She grew up poor in Everett, Washington. Her parents were struggling musicians. At 14, she played jazz guitar in smoky clubs to keep the lights on at home.

She wasn't romantic about music. She viewed sessions as factory shifts.

If the producer wanted a specific sound, she delivered. Then she packed her gear and drove to the next studio.

The men in the session bands respected her because they had no choice.

She was faster. She corrected their chord charts with a pencil during takes.

She wasn't always polite. During a 1968 session, she told a famous producer his horn arrangement sounded like "a dying dog." She played it her way instead. They kept her version.

She carried her own amplifier. She wore practical cardigans. She chain-smoked through takes.

When she couldn't find childcare, she brought her kids to the studio. They sat quietly in the control room while their mother cut platinum records.

When "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" hit number one, she was already recording jingles in a different building.

The Work

1964: Gold Star Studios. She recorded the bassline for "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'."

It became the most-played track of the 20th century.

Her name: not on the record.

She invented techniques out of necessity. When standard bass sounded too muddy for AM radio, she taped felt over the strings to dampen overtones. She used a hard pick on heavy flatwound strings.

The sound snapped. It cut through static. It became the sound of the decade.

Bass players spent years trying to figure out what equipment famous bands used to get that tone.

They were studying the wrong people.

The Beach Boys. Ray Charles. Frank Sinatra. Simon and Garfunkel. Stevie Wonder. The Supremes.

The faded sleeves still list the wrong names.

The needle drops. The bassline starts.

The woman playing it is still invisible on the cover.

Carol Kaye: the woman who played the soundtrack of a generation from behind soundproof glass while the world looked elsewhere.

Original source unknown.

Daphne du Maurier

 

Do you have a particular memory that this quote makes you think of?

If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.

― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

That line from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca really does linger, doesn’t it?

What makes it so powerful is how sensory it is—memory not as something abstract, but something you could hold, uncork, breathe in. She doesn’t just talk about remembering; she imagines reliving. That quiet longing in the quote taps into something almost universal: the wish to preserve moments exactly as they were, untouched by time or change.

And there’s a subtle melancholy tucked inside it too. If such a bottle existed, would we ever move forward? Or would we keep returning to the same perfect moments, like walking through a house we can never truly live in again?

It’s a beautiful paradox—wanting memory to stay vivid, while knowing its fading is part of what gives it meaning.

Daphne du Maurier frequently explored themes of time, memory, and the blending of past and present, notably in Rebecca and her personal writings. Famous quotes include reflections on time's inability to destroy memory and the concept of time as "all-dimensional". 

Here are key Daphne du Maurier quotes regarding time:

"Could time be all-dimensional – yesterday, today, tomorrow running concurrently in ceaseless repetition? Perhaps."

"Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand." (From Rebecca)

"It was hopeless the way time did not stand still, not for a fraction of a second, that there was never an occasion when I could grasp..."

"Time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real." (From Rebecca)

"As an eavesdropper in time my role was passive, without commitment or responsibility."

"We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost." (From Myself When Young) 

According to this collection on the Daphne du Maurier website, she also wrote about the rapid, fantastical shift of time: "I have seen the white sea-mists of early summer turn the hill to fantasy, so that it becomes, in a single second, a ghost land of enchantment..." (From The King's General).

and another of my favorites...

Time will mellow it, make it a moment for laughter. But now it was not funny, now I did not laugh. It was not the future, it was the present. It was too vivid and too real.

― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Larry Fleet - Where I Find God

 

How lovely it was to be alone again.

 

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say: “By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She’s married, with two children.” And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me. Not even Maxim. If Maxim had been there I should not be lying as I was now, chewing a piece of grass, my eyes shut. I should have been watching him, watching his eyes, his expression. Wondering if he liked it, if he was bored. Wondering what he was thinking. Now I could relax, none of these things mattered. Maxim was in London. How lovely it was to be alone again.

― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

No matter how old...

 

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 

1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.

3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.”

4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.

5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.

6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.

7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.

8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.

9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.

10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.

11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.

12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23

13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24

14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record

15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity

16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France

17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28

18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world

19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter

20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean

21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind

22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest

23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream."

24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics

25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight

26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.

27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.

28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas

30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger

31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States

32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.

33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"

34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.

35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.

36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.

37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.

38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".

40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived

41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise

42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out

43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US

44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats

45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President”

― Pablo

ai art by me

Water and a mouth

 

"Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.
Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone.
Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does."

—Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

Source: English LIterature on Facebook

Also, from Margaret:

“The difficulty is that I have no mouth through which I can speak. I can’t make myself understood, not in your world, the world of bodies, of tongues and fingers; and most of the time I have no listeners, not on your side of the river. Those of you who may catch the odd whisper, the odd squeak, so easily mistake my words for breezes rustling the dry reeds, for bats at twilight, for bad dreams.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

ai Art by me.

you really can't

 

Source: Stephanie Bennett-Henry on Facebook

LIFE

 

Source: Finding Joy on Facebook

tender truth

 

The rain taps lightly on the roof of an umbrella and someone says,

listen to the rain

while someone else smiles and says,

listen to the music.

It is the same sky,

the same water falling,

the same soft drumming

on temporary shelter

but one hears the downpour,

and one hears a song.

The soil settles between our fingers as hands sink into earth and one finds grit,

whilst another finds grounding.

The ocean folds, as its waves crash hard against the waiting shore, and one sees chaos, whilst another sees beauty.

Because maybe the music never came from the rain at all.

Maybe the music and the beauty and the grounding comes from the quiet, tender truth that we do not see the world

as it is.

But as we are looking at it.

*****

A new poem that I wrote for my Patreon a couple of weeks ago. A reminder for a new week that - when it feels like the world isn't what we hope to find out there - we can still look at our own little world in a way that brings more calm, less chaos.

Becky Hemsley 2026

Lovely artwork by Maria Quezada

Source: Becky Hemsley Poetry on Facebook

Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mtn Boys - Dark and Stormy is the Desert

 

Dark and Thorny

Dark and stormy is the desert
Through which pilgrims make their way
Yet beyond this vale of sorrow
Lie the fields of endless day

Oh young soldiers are you weary
Of the roughness of the way
Does your strength begin to fail you
And your vigor to decay

Jesus Jesus will go with you
He will lead you to his throne
He whose thunder shapes creation
He who bids the planets roll

Around him are ten thousand angels
Ready to obey his command
They’ll all be there to hover round you
Til you’ve reached the heavenly land

There on flowery hills of pleasure
Lie the fields of endless rest
Love and joy and peace forever
Reign and triumph in your breast

Loneliness isn’t always the sound of an empty room.

 

Loneliness isn’t always the sound of an empty room.

Sometimes it’s found in a cluttered kitchen counter, a bursting inbox, or your little one calling, “Mom, mom, mom, Mom!” over and over. Sometimes loneliness comes wrapped in the glittery bow of productivity and completed to-do lists. Sometimes it sneaks in on the best days, in the highlight moments of life, when you seem surrounded by good.

Loneliness surprises me.

I think I know how to recognize it: the silence, the echo of my thoughts bouncing off the walls of my brain, the feeling of being left out, unheard, or overlooked.

But loneliness?

It likes to hide within the noise.

It hides in tired eyes that no one seems to notice. It hides in the cracks and crevices of the typical day. I’ve felt it after racing here and there, after doing laundry and sweeping and cleaning and prepping dinner and helping with homework and rarely being asked, “How are you today?” after a day spent meeting everyone else’s needs.

Does anyone see me? Does anyone care?

And then the sigh. The breath.

And then, going right back to doing what needs to be done.

Loneliness doesn’t always look like being alone.

Sometimes it can be sitting at a table with friends or in a crowd and still feeling invisible. It can be found in doing all the right things — laughing on cue, answering messages, volunteering, staying busy — and still, deep within there is this ache, this longing for a connection that goes beyond the surface.

I know. I’ve felt that, too.

It’s surprising how quickly it can creep in and how deep it can feel.

Am I the only one?

Sometimes it feels like everyone else is moving and everyone else’s plans are unfolding, and there we are: stuck. Stuck is the loneliness of lonely places, at least for me. Stuck is lonely because who wants to say, “Look at me! I’m so stuck and I’m so alone!”

So instead, we stay quiet. It feels safer. We shrink and think, “I must be the only one.” But so often, others are walking right next to us, wondering if they, too, are the only ones.

I’ve wondered that so many times.

Loneliness is the master of disguise, honestly.

Sometimes it looks like fierce independence, sometimes like strength, and sometimes it’s within the words, “I’m fine.”

But here’s what I’ve learned: loneliness doesn’t mean something is wrong with me. Or you. It means WE ARE HUMAN. It means we are created and wired for this connection and depth, and a friend, a person seeing us and saying, “Me too. I see you.” It means my soul, your soul, has a part that wants to be seen, appreciated, and valued.

And that? That’s not weakness. It’s beautiful.

It’s part of being human.

So my dear friend, if today you’re feeling that ache, that one that often can’t be described with words, please know this: you are not alone.

You are not the only one.

You are not broken.

You are not too much or too little.

I see you. I appreciate you. I am proud of you. I value you.

I’m so proud of you for showing up, giving, and loving.

Sometimes it just takes one person to remind us that we’re seen and matter.

And today, today, that just might be me to you.

~Rachel

Source: Finding Joy on Facebook

...if we keep checking on each other

 

The first voicemail lasted nineteen seconds.

“Hi, sweetheart, this is your reminder to take the chicken out of the freezer before church. Also don’t trust those grapes in the fridge. They’ve turned on us.”

I stood in my kitchen staring at my phone and smiling like an idiot.

It had come from an unknown number.

Wrong number, obviously.

But the voice was warm and Southern and matter-of-fact in exactly the way my mother’s had been, and for one little moment, hearing a woman call somebody “sweetheart” and warn her about grapes felt like opening a window in a stuffy room.

My mother had been gone three years by then.

Long enough that the sharp pain had softened, but not long enough that I didn’t still miss her in all the ridiculous little places. At the grocery store when I reached for her favorite canned peaches. In the church pew when the alto line came in. On Sunday afternoons when I made roast chicken and wanted to ask whether she thought the potatoes needed ten more minutes.

So that voicemail landed hard.

I almost deleted it.

Instead, I listened to it twice.

The next day, there was another one.

“Baby, if you’re stopping by the drugstore, can you get the unscented lotion this time? The lavender one smells like a funeral home to me.”

I laughed out loud.

Then, because I am a grown woman with some manners, I called her back.

She answered on the second ring.

“Well, hello?”

“Hi,” I said. “I think you may have the wrong number. I’m not… whoever you’re trying to reach.”

There was a little pause.

Then she said, “Oh, mercy.”

Her voice was exactly the same as the voicemails. Soft, sure, and full of the kind of life that notices grapes.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “My daughter changed her number and I clearly wrote it down wrong because I was distracted by my neighbor’s peacock.”

I laughed. “Your neighbor has a peacock?”

“He does, and it has no respect for boundaries,” she said.

That was how I met Miss Loretta.

She was seventy-four, lived two towns over, and had one daughter named Janine, two arthritic knees, and strong opinions about lotion, produce, and doctors who “talk too fast and listen too little.”

I was fifty-eight, widowed, and still getting used to a house that echoed after dinner.

What started as me returning a wrong-number call somehow turned into a conversation that lasted twenty-eight minutes.

At one point she asked, “Do you cook?”

I said, “Enough to stay alive and comforted.”

She laughed and said, “Good. Then write this down. If your cornbread tastes dry, you’re being too proud with the buttermilk.”

I wrote it down.

That should have been enough.

It wasn’t.

Three days later, another voicemail.

This time very clearly intended for me.

“Just checking on you. The weather looked gloomy and I thought you might need a nudge to make something warm for supper.”

I called her back laughing.

After that, we settled into the oddest, sweetest routine of my life.

Loretta left voicemails.

I called her back.

Sometimes we talked five minutes.

Sometimes forty.

Her messages were tiny gifts.

“Remember to buy stamps before you run out. Running out makes people feel more isolated than they need to.”

“Take your vitamins, even if they insult your dignity with how many there are.”

“I saw strawberries on sale and thought of you, though I don’t know if you even like strawberries. That’s all.”

I did like strawberries.

I began to look forward to being thought of in such small, specific ways.

Especially because my own life, while full in many respects, had gotten terribly quiet in the spaces nobody notices from the outside.

My daughter lived in Denver.

My son called often but briefly, usually while driving.

My friends were dear but busy.

And evenings had become the kind of stillness that can feel peaceful one day and too wide the next.

Loretta’s calls softened that.

Then one week she didn’t call.

Not Monday.

Not Tuesday.

Not Wednesday.

By Thursday afternoon, I realized I was worried.

I told myself that was ridiculous. She was a wrong-number woman in another town. I did not know her last name. I had no formal reason to be concerned.

Then my phone rang.

It was her.

“Before you fuss,” she said immediately, “I had a little hospital nonsense and forgot where I put my charger.”

I sat down so fast I nearly missed the chair.

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing dramatic,” she said in a voice that absolutely meant at least some drama. “A blood pressure scare. They’ve sent me home with stern instructions and tasteless crackers.”

That was all I needed to hear.

I asked for her address.

She said, “Now don’t get carried away.”

I said, “Too late.”

The next morning, I drove to her town with a grocery bag full of things women know to bring.

Real crackers.

Chicken soup.

Good tea.

Fresh fruit.

A better lotion than lavender.

And a little potted mum because nobody should recover from “hospital nonsense” without something alive nearby.

She opened the door in a pale blue robe, looked at me for one second, and said, “Well. I suppose this is what I get for calling strangers sweetheart.”

I laughed and stepped inside.

Her house smelled like lemon oil and books. She had afghans on the couch, framed photos everywhere, and one ceramic chicken collection that made me instantly trust her more.

We spent the afternoon together.

I fixed lunch.

She complained about doctors.

We folded towels because apparently neither of us can sit with clean laundry nearby without addressing it.

She told me stories about Janine as a teenager and about the peacock next door, whose name was apparently Kevin and who had become “emotionally entitled.”

When I left, she hugged me hard and said, softly, “You came like family.”

That undid me a little.

Because it had been a long time since someone had said something like that and meant it.

After that, our odd little friendship became real in every way that mattered.

I drove over once a month.

We went to lunch sometimes.

She mailed me handwritten recipes with notes in the margins like:

Needs more pepper if weather is rude.

I helped her set up a doctor portal she hated on principle.

She taught me how to make coconut cake that didn’t dry out.

She called when my daughter had surgery.

I called when her peacock problem escalated.

Then last spring, I had a mammogram callback.

Nothing bad in the end, thank God.

But those days waiting for the extra imaging felt like walking around with a stone in my chest.

I hadn’t told many people.

I don’t know why.

Maybe because naming fear makes it louder.

The morning of the appointment, there was a knock at my door.

A florist delivery.

Inside the box was one small bouquet of yellow roses and a card in Loretta’s handwriting.

For whatever the doctors say,

Wear the good bra.

Breathe before parking.

And remember that waiting is not the same thing as losing.

Love,

Loretta

I sat at my kitchen counter and cried into the flowers.

Because how did she know exactly what kind of care I needed?

Then again, maybe that’s what older women do best.

Not solve.

Not rescue.

Just notice the practical shape of fear and answer it with something useful and tender.

Now it’s been four years since that first wrong-number voicemail about chicken and traitor grapes.

Loretta is eighty now.

She still leaves messages.

I still save some of them.

One says:

Take a sweater. Public buildings are run by men with no circulation issues.

Another:

If soup sounds good, trust that. Soup is wisdom.

And my favorite says:

You are not bothering the right people.

I listen to that one more than I probably should.

Because she’s right.

Sometimes love arrives by blood.

Sometimes by marriage.

And sometimes by one wrong number, one warm voice, and a woman old enough to know that the world goes easier if we keep checking on each other.

Source: Cheryl Purcell on Facebook

ai art by me

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water (Audio)

 

Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water album was released on January 26, 1970. The title single was also released that same month. As their final studio album, it topped the charts for 10 weeks in the US and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. 

Clinging to a Bridge Over Troubled Water

I was just shy of fifteen when Bridge Over Troubled Water drifted into my life. I was a confused, headstrong teenager, certain I understood love.

I didn’t.

I fell for the boy I would marry—and stayed with for twenty-two years in a life that never quite fit. I stayed for my daughters. I stayed because I was agoraphobic. I stayed because I believed I couldn’t leave.

Until 1992, when I had no choice.

It took three years to end it on paper, and far longer to quiet the ache of regret. I think now I carried a touch of Cinderella Syndrome—waiting for something to transform that never would. Betrayal came, more than once, and each time it hollowed something out in me.

I was devastated when it finally broke.

But somewhere in that breaking, I found a kind of bridge.

Not a person. Not a rescue.
Something quieter.

A thin, trembling strength that carried me forward when I was sure I couldn’t move at all.

I didn’t cross it beautifully. I crossed it barely.

But I crossed.

And sometimes, that is the miracle—
not that we are saved,
but that we survive.

Wild Geese

 

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver - Wild Geese, 1986.

Art: Kayama Matazō - Cranes, 1988.

Source: Ravenous Butterflies on Facebook

4am

 

I met with 4am last night

She said to say hello

And she said she’s seen a lot of you

Since several weeks ago

She said she hears your worries

When you’re lying there awake

But she’d rather watch you sleeping

With a smile upon your face

So she’s gathered up your worries

And she feeds them to the stars

And they swallow them with fire

‘Til they’re left with only half

Then they whisper to the sun

As she begins her morning climb

And the sunshine takes your worries

And accepts them every time

She chops them into pieces

‘Til she’s left with merely grains

Then she throws them to the clouds

So they can gently fall as rain

And the sunlight then transforms

Your drops of worry into hope

So that rainbow that you see?

That’s 4am saying hello

Becky Hemsley 2020

Artwork by Graciela Perrone, Artist

'4am' is in her first collection

Source: Becky Hemsley Poetry on Facebook

Sticks and Stones

 

Sticks and stones may break my bones

But words will cut me deep

They’ll keep on hurting long after

The breaks and bruises heal

Because the sticks will meet my skin,

The stones may hit my bones

But words will carve their way beneath

And make my soul their home

And this gives them the power

To control me and to win

‘Cause now I’ve words of worthlessness

From outside and within

See stones are thrown in anger

But our words are thrown in spite

And whilst they’re easier to pitch

They’re more difficult to fight

Because we cannot run away,

We cannot just unhear them,

Because their echoes resonate

Long after we are near them

And if we are not careful

Then those words become our voice

One that learns to shout the loudest

And to make the biggest noise

So do not be the reason

Someone hates their own reflection

Or thinks they are not worthy

Or deserving of affection

And when you pick your words

Weigh them awhile between your palms

Consider whether hurling them

Will heal or hurt or harm

Yes, sticks and stones may break a bone

But words can break a heart

And they can be the reason

Someone tears themself apart

So if you wouldn’t break their bones

By throwing stones and sticks

It’s likely for the best

That some words do not leave your lips

******

Becky Hemsley 2022

Artwork by Femke Muntz

'Sticks and Stones' is from 'What the Wild Replied: Poems from Human Nature' available on Amazon

Source: Becky Hemsley Poetry on Facebook

I'll Fly Away - Alan Jackson

 

Poetry

I started with this paragraph and played with it ... I had help.

When the moon is my only companion
I plunge myself into memories of us 

and swim in the river of blurred dreams

When the moon is my only companion,
I plunge into memories of us
and swim the river of blurred dreams.

The water carries your voice,
stretched thin by distance and time,
and I let it pull me under—
not to drown,
but to remember how breathing once felt
beside you.

When the moon is my only companion
I close my eyes and my mind to thoughts
of living days when happiness was
easy as breathing,
when laughter did not echo back
like a question unanswered.

The night listens without judgment,
silver light stitching memories—
a face I once held close,
dreams that learned how to fade.
I stay still,
afraid that if I move,
even the moon
might leave.

When the moon is my only companion,
I plunge into memories of us—
the water colder than I expect.

I swim the river of blurred dreams,
where the current tugs at my ankles
and every shape looks like you
until it doesn’t.

I don’t reach the other shore.
I just keep moving,
quiet enough not to wake the past.

I'm told this is a poignant image—using the isolation of the night to navigate the fluid, often hazy boundary between what was real and what remains in your mind.

ai art by me