My Poetry-Like Writings of Way Back When

 Searching

In the age of the new

We search for the old

Up mountains high

To gurus low

We Channel, We Chant

We Breath, We Pant

We Sweat, We Smudge

We Consume

Pond Sludge

We read the books that

Promise us riches

We retreat to the forest

To relieve our itches

We Empower, We Enchant

We Anoint, 
We Decant The Wine

That will Open our Mind

We Diet, We Cycle, 
We Walk

We Run
Searching for Answers

That don’t seem to come

Then we start again

Reading the books

Where someone tells us

All answers are within

Oh good, so no more

Dieting, cycling, walking or running?

I’m completing this poem

15 years after it was begun

And I’ve learned that while

The answers may be within

You must first

Love yourself

To access them

Liz 1996 and 2011

Letter Writing

The lost Art

Fax, E-Mail and telephone

Have taken the place

Of pen and paper

And I feel all alone

In wishing that

Letter writing could go

On and on

When I was a kid

Way back when

We wrote to grandmas

And aunts and cousins

And friends

We wrote to Gene Autry

And Hop-a-Long, too

And to our great thrill

They wrote us back; woo woo

My nieces still drop a note

Now and then

Their greeting to me,

“Hi, Aunt Lib”

Oh dear, no Dear Aunt Lib?

The times must have been

More gentle back when 
for letters to have included

so many 'dears' in them.

But like T-Rex

And predictable weather

I guess letter writing

Has been assigned to

The land of Never-Never.

Liz 1997

Reading this 14 years later
I laugh about

Fax and email

Now it’s Texting,
Facebook, Google+

And Twitter

And I’m still stuck

Wanting a letter.

Liz 2011

Mid-Life

Mid-life can be long and scary

The time that came 
way too soon

It’s heart burn and burn out

It’s weight and waiting

Divorce and dauntless

Confusion and consolation

It’s trauma and triumph

This must be my mother’s life

How can mine already include

Brittle bones and yet, bikini’s?

Creams and crumbling

Fiber and freedom

It’s that time between…

Neither young nor old

Its joint aches, yes and then

Wild abandon

It’s coming to terms with

Promises unmet

Figures unkempt

Nest now empty

Elderly parents and their death

My own mortality to be met

But in spite of the long and scary ride

It’s not all lost hormones and pride
It's just another chapter
in the book of my life

Liz 1997

ADDICTION

Sneaks up on you

And whispers,

“just a little won’t hurt

You’ll feel so much better

You deserve to feel good

Things have been so rough on you”

And – so you do

Just a little, that is

And, for a little while

You do feel better

But soon you don’t

Feel so good…that is

Matter-of-fact

Maybe it would feel good

Not to feel at all

So you drown in booze or horses or slots

or drugs or sex or shopping

or work or tobacco

or all

And down you go

And

D

O

W

N

You go

And

D

O

W

N

YOU ARE

Straight into the arms of the demon

 

Secrets

We met on Thursday at the local bar

The night you got lucky or spent the weekend alone

I was new to the scene

23, recently from home

He was 38, a man of the world,

Out for night, all alone

When I arrived, the bar was crowded

He give me his bar stool, he bought me a drink

He gave me his card

I went home to dream

The very next day

He gave me a call

We went to a movie

Had something to eat

I asked him first date questions

His answers..vague, if at all

He took me home, said

“maybe sometime we’ll go dancing”

I didn’t dance, but it didn’t matter,

He didn’t call

So that’s the end

Oh no

I couldn’t get him off my mind

I sent him a note

“what do you recommend for Spring fever?”

He replied

“distemper shots”

He took me to dinner

He took me to bed

Two years later 
his answers still vague

We got married 
to his surprise

Twenty-three years of marriage

Two children

Ulcers

Chronic Depression

I asked him to leave

He did 
his secrets intact

Liz

1997

RETREAT

Can I do what the poets do

In little lines of verse?

Can I describe to you

An early morning amidst

The Oaks?

The silence broken now and then

By the woodpecker pounding on a dead tree?

A rustle in the bushes

A family of deer with still spotted fawns?

Can you feel the beginning of

another

Hot, hot day – still tolerable at 6:00 a.m.

But just barely?

Can you smell the remnants of a wild fire

That came too close by?

Can I describe it to you in such a way that you would know

Why I feel such peace in this place?

Can you understand the solitude?

Nothing other than an occasional jet

Leaving a high trail as it flies East to

Dallas or Denver?

Can you understand that in that solitude

That quiet

I can listen…will listen to God?

Liz 1996

 

Help

Sometimes I live for hours or days or weeks

In a pit of darkness

Mired in despair

Finally I yell

GOD HELP ME

GOD HELP ME

GOD HELP ME

I extend my hand and cling

To The Divine

Who has always been there waiting for me

To come again into the Light

Job’s patience is rivaled only by God’s

How often have I hidden out of sight

Only to be welcomed

Back to the Light

Now God can speak to me

Not in booming voice

LIZ, LIZ

But rather in

The tomatoes

The flowers

The star thistle

I receive nourishment

In the beauty

And am lead through the sticky places

When the well pump comes on

I’m thankful 
for the water

That helps my plants to thrive

Just as the Living Water

Keeps my Soul alive

And in my solitude

Here on the farm

I can focus

Not on the weeds that still need pulled

Or the grapes that still need staked

Or the mortgage that still comes due

I focus on God

And I am called

To worship

To thanksgiving

To love

To service

To trust

To faith

And when I leave the solitude of this place

I am sustained

I am comforted

I am replenished

Liz 1996

DIVORCE

ACRIMONY

BROKEN PROMISES

CUSTODY

DEVASTATED DREAMS

FAILURE

FAITHLESSNESS

FINISHED

GONE

GRIEF

HEARTBREAK

INERTIA

LOST

LONELY

LEGALITIES

LAWYERS

MAD

MADDENING

NOTHINGNESS

NUTS

OVER

        Oh yeah

PAPERWORK

PALPITATIONS

QUIET

RAGING

STUBBORN

SAD

TALKING

TELLING

UNDONE

VENTING

RECOVERY

 IT COMES SLOWLY

AFTER THE LOSS AND PAIN

AFTER THE PAIN COMES FORGIVING

AFTER THE FORGIVING

FORGETTING

AFTER FORGETTING

REJOICING

BECAUSE YOU HAVE LOVED BEFORE

AND WILL ONCE MORE

 

Liz 1996

                                                                                                                       

Retirement - Year One

When I enthusiastically retired in late 2009 I had a lot of things planned for the first year and the luxury of not having a daily schedule beyond excited me.  I visited Mother in Texas, went to Hong Kong for two weeks with my sisters, enjoyed a two week car trip from New Orleans to Jacksonville, Fla., with a friend, another trip back to Texas when Mom was ill and yet another when she died.  In spite of the busyness of the year I still had plenty of time to realize that I’d retired far earlier than my financial circumstances realistically permitted and that there are lots of hours in the day to use. 

I was so needy of a period of time to recover from years of life, I wasn’t too concerned about rushing into anything; be it a part time job or volunteerism and I soon run out of travel resources.  So I read and read and read.  One of my retirement gifts was a Kindle and I loved it.  Having at my fingertips almost any book I could think of and immediately played right into my love of reading and my compulsivity.  It became very expensive as I was downloading 2 to 3+ books a week.  (Get a friend to share books on your reader). While looking through the 175, 178 books listed under Religion and Spirituality in the online bookstore, I came across, Louise Hay’s, You Can Heal Your Life.  I’d heard about her books for years but for some reason had never read. I quickly downloaded and soon understood why this book had come to my attention now.  “When the student is ready, the teacher is there”.  I was ready, and Louise, the teacher was there.  The premise of the book is about learning to love self.  One of the exercises is to use a hand held mirror, look into your eyes and say, “I love you Liz and I accept you exactly as you are”.  What the heck, I had the time and the mirror and I knew there was plenty of evidence that I’d never really learned to love me.  And here’s how it went.  I looked into the mirror and said, “I love you Liz and I accept you exactly as you are”.  And then immediately I said, “Wow, you need a facial, some of those blackheads look like they’ve been there for years and do something about those teeth!”  An important part of the exercise was not to criticize myself at all.  Suddenly this was getting much more difficult.  But I was committed to giving this an honest effort and for the next few days, several times a day; I repeated the mantra while looking into the mirror.  Stopping years and years of self-criticism was the most difficult part of the exercise, but I persevered. On about the 10^th day of this practice, I looked into the mirror and said, “I love you, Liz and…..and then I started to sob.  “I don’t even know what I love and accept myself means”.  When the wracking sobs stopped, I started writing what I thought loving me might mean.  And this is the list I came up with. 

I Affirm me.

I Appreciate me

I Approve of me

I Believe In Me

I Care for me

I Champion me 

I am Compassionate to me

I encourage me

I take the steps necessary to energize me

I enjoy me

I forgive me

I lift me up

I listen to me

I am Kind to me 

I nourish me

I nurture me

I am patient with me

I please me

I respect me

I speak well of me

I support me

I am generous to me

I am giving to me

I am kind to me

I am pleasant to me

I am tender with me

I became more comfortable with the exercise and could actually look into the mirror and not even see all the things I’d spent a great deal of time criticizing.  That was a huge step forward.  When I’d forget what loving myself meant, I could always refer to my list.  However, old, entrenched habits die hard and I needed to add to the mirror work. 

Recalling the effectiveness of religions creating an oft repeated Creed for the purpose of training minds and hearts to take on and in a particular set of beliefs, I created my own Creed.  It’s lengthy and covers everything I could think of to help me love me.  Year one I read that daily and the more difficult the day, the more times a day I read it.  I always, always felt better when reading it.  I tried not to have an expectation of what the outcome of learning to love me would be.  For the time being, I just had to trust that it was a good thing and so the outcome would also be good.  I did wonder how I would know when I actually loved myself.  Would I feel something?  Would I look different?  Would the weight I’ve wanted to shed for years magically melt away?  Would I suddenly embrace exercise and a healthy diet?  Would I smile more?  Would I be kinder?  It was still a mystery what healthy self-love looked or felt like.

There were certainly times when feeling dark or blue or unworthy showed up.  Thomas Moore’s, Dark Night of the Soul, helped me to understand that the dark side is part of the human condition.  However, I chose to believe that the more I loved me, the less the dark side would show up. The dark can be very seductive and I had to think about whether or not I wanted to go there.  I determined that I did not and could actually quickly pull myself from the ditch. 

After 6 months or so of the practices I realized that I felt good, day after day, week after week, month after month.  Wow, this must be a manifestation of loving me and a good one at that.  It sometimes felt strange and uncomfortable to feel good all the time since that had not been my history and there were times I struggled with that, strange as that sounds.  I had to make a choice that it was ok to feel good; I was worthy of that.   

To Be Continued....