Collecting Leaves

Once in a while,

when I am walking through a forest,

I look down at the hundreds of leaves beneath my feet.

I remember that I have seen many lives,

I have collected them too along the way.

Then I go home

and open a book,

and there are the leaves once again.

Carefully pressed inside,

fading slowly,

but there to remind me

how far I had to walk.

Week 37. Organizing.

Some days the memories of the past come in and cause me to slow down and look very close, almost too close at times. I have to stop what I’m doing to reflect on the life I lived, the person I was back then. I know we all go there at times, to those dark places that cause us to want to be alone. There is no cure of coarse, and that sucks but there are moments of hope too, moments when we feel like it’s all been worth it. All the choices are the right ones and it was all meant to be. It seems as though reminders of how we made it through are so important. It can be an object, a song, a poem, anything. It’s remarkable how we need markers, like chapters that divide our lives into sections. I find it fascinating to think about how we are constantly trying to organize our minds the same way we do our everyday lives, seeking ways to put things away, ways to process what we lived through.

The grand leaf

Some trees shed the greatest of leaves.

So grand you cannot simply pass them by.

You must stand and look upon them

as more than single sided.

Turn it over you will see hundreds of variegations,

leading you off into all sorts of directions.

Week 36. The other side.

I found a huge leaf while walking the other day, so big it reminded me of an elephant ear. I turned it over to inspect the intricate network of veins, much like those in the human body. This habit of turning things over I seemed to have picked it up from my good friend Clare. One day, while walking through a flea market together we came upon a pile of interesting fabric scraps. I pulled out a few quilt squares that caught my eye. As I was looking at the patchwork scraps, admiring the color combinations and textures Clare immediate turned each square over to look at the backs. She explained “the reverse sides are always much more interesting”. I had never thought about it like that before. We show the neat, organized self but it seems more important to notice the process of what it takes to get there, the stuff most people don’t see. This idea reminded me of a line in a play I saw recently. One of the main characters said, “It’s more important what we can not talk about than that which we choose to discuss”. It’s kind of the same thing when you think about it. Examining what we choose not to show is really the part that we should look at, how else can we understand how we are made.

Leaves

I’ve been looking up

into the trees.

Into the rays of the sun;

the way it peeks through the branches,

allowing tiny pockets of warmth

and minutes at a time

to be still.

The trees are changing that is true.

I continue to walk,

collecting the leaves as they fall.

Searching for variety;

for the subtle differences between each one.

Each pattern is a map.

Each possibility natures way

of saying that every path

is the right one.

week 35. Variations and paths.

I have been walking through the woods looking for leaves these days, seeking out all sorts of varieties of shapes, colors and textures. I began to think about how many possibilities we encounter each day and all the variables that affect the choices we make. Wouldn’t it be easier to have a map or better yet a GPS in order to know which path to choose? I guess I’m much more at peace when I let go of that idea though. When I stop worrying so much about where I’ll end up and just try to notice what’s in front of me.

But my walks in the woods got me thinking about the simple act of walking as well. There’s not much needed really in order to walk, just the desire to move forward and that can be done even with out legs. I think that creating art is the same way, you have to just get in there and do it, there is only so much thinking you can do. At a certain point it’s better to just make the mess and then worry about how to clean it up. Wisdom seems to come from the process of moving forward, what ever the out come we grow from noticing what we feel, what we see, even what we collect along the way.

Tears for flowers

Rivers have been made from the thousands who have cried.

I know I am but one of the few.

These tears are small reminders

of the wounds we carry still to this day.

Yet here I remain,

collecting puddles of sweet rainwater-

my hands cupping each drop as it falls from the sky.

With the hope that all that has made the world green

will one day grow a garden of wildflowers for me.

Wild, untamed and free,

with roots wound loosely into the deep dark soil of the earth.

Week 34. Rain.

I wrote this poem a few years ago but thought it was appropriate on account of all the rain we’ve been having lately. I remember it was written at a particularly difficult time, right after my ex husband left. I felt as though I had cried rivers trying to come to terms with how my life was unraveling before my eyes. Through it all, I kept telling myself that one day all the pain would make sense. I wanted to be reminded that the rain is for a reason, that it has purpose. I also wanted know that stability was possible no matter how much it rained and no matter how long it took to get there.