Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Category: Haiku/Poetry

February 11, 2017

Awareness of pain

Awareness of pain
Life-shaping yet elusive
Lodges deep
In bones and sinews
Erupts without warning
Bleeding over pages
Of my life
Softening my heart
Longing for tenderness
Squandered in the past
Foolishly given away
To dull my pain

***

I don’t live in this awareness every day. I wouldn’t survive if I did. I’m grateful for God’s grace every day of my life. Still, moments of grief arrive, often taking me by storm. They don’t destroy me. Instead, they soften and connect me not just to my pain, but to that of others.

I used to think these waves of emotional and spiritual pain would fade. They haven’t. In fact, the more willing I am to live with grief, the more I find myself grieving and growing.

This past week I listened to Beethoven’s Sonata 8 (“Pathetique) and found myself right where this poem is. In the middle of a teary eruption. The kind that fosters life, not death, when I’m willing to live through it.

You can listen to a brilliant performance by Daniel Barenboim here.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 February 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Aware

14 Comments
February 8, 2017

majestic peaks soar

pxby-romania-mtns-winter-sunrise

majestic peaks soar
in otherworldly silence
broken by sunrise

***

Life is noisy.
My eyes keep traveling back to this photo.
I want to be on the mountaintop.
I want to hear this moment when speech fails
and creation bears witness
to the majesty of its Creator.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 8 February 2017
Photo found at Pixabay.com
Mountains in Romania, Winter Sunrise

Response to Daily Prompt: Heard

7 Comments
February 3, 2017

music to my ears

waves-washing-onshore-huff-post

I love the calm cadence of your voice
and the way you make rare
the everyday

waves rolling in on the beach
wind whispering in the willows
my husband reading to me aloud
Mendelssohn’s E major Song Without Words
J. S. Bach’s C major Prelude #1
doves cooing in the morning
robins singing in dusky evening
the overwhelming calm of Psalm 23

***

I wrote the first three lines in response to Frank Prem’s beautiful poem, “Ten Signs of Life.” The rest of the poem is my short list of voices that make rare my everyday. The image at the top was icing on the  cake.

What voices bring you joy and help keep you grounded?

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 February 2017
Photo found at huffingtonpost.com

WordPress Daily Prompt: Overwhelming

17 Comments
February 2, 2017

Dreamscape

kintai-bridge-yamaguchi-prefecture-japan

she woke early this morning
green thoughts flowing through her veins

This small poem came into my consciousness as I was waking up this morning. I was surprised and heartened, given my state of mind late yesterday when I wrote Intimidation. Something came through my spirit as I slept and wiped the slate clean for today. An ordinary day made extraordinary by this gift and the stunning image that later came up on my screen saver.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 2 February 2016
Image found at pinterest.com – Kintai Bridge, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan

Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Clean

18 Comments
February 2, 2017

Intimidation

stormy_weather_by_stock_by_brink

heart races
breath shallow
torpor floods
my body
one behind
the other
heavy legs
drag feet
no need to write
nothing to say

lie down
sleep on it
burdened minds
need rest

fear waits
in the wings
if words
seek light
will fury fall
from starless
moonless sky
or might
some beacon
pierce my heart
plotting a way
back home

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 1 February 2017
Image found at Chicagonow.com

8 Comments
January 25, 2017

When I was only 10

1953

When I was only 10
My world was just a little space
My news was measured
by events mundane
yet looming large
Upon the canvas of my life
Not yet in focus

First bra
First period
Third sister born
Dishes to wash
Clothes to iron
Floors to vacuum
Free of charge

The world crept in
A constant threat
Somewhat removed
Yet never dead
Beware lip paint!
Hide those boobs!
Watch out for men!
It never ends

At home as well as overseas
The world to come
arrived in headlines
One by one

Score one for Jonas Salk polio vaccine!
Score one for I like Ike and Mamie
and Queen Elizabeth II!
Score one for 200 North Korean POWs
freed from Koje Island!
Score none for stern McCarthyism
or truth or trust or justice
Goodbye Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
Goodbye Stalin; Hello Khrushchev
Goodbye US monopoly
On the hydrogen bomb

But all is not yet lost!
Score one for urban flight
trickling first from NYC
Best booming business opportunity
They’ll all need houses,
cars, garages and don’t forget TVs!
Score one for schools and ad campaigns
For stars of stage and movie screens
Competing for our $Loyalty

You pay
We take
And you will see
how much more joyful
Life can be!

Trust me!
Would I lie?
We’re going to be great again!
No, make that the greatest!
All hail the mighty dollar!
All seen, alas, in retrospect….

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 25 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Ten

13 Comments
January 23, 2017

Shrink not from pain

shrink not from pain
nor overlook it–
truth lies within

***

a proverb for today
generated in my mind
while on a therapy table
pondering realities
aligned for consideration
tutors for tomorrow

***

Today I temporarily ended 4 months of physical therapy for my broken jaw. I graduated – sort of! I’ll miss the moist heat wrap placed around my neck and jaw for 15 or 20 minutes right when I get there. Just picture me lying there on my back, pillows beneath my head and a wedge under my knees, totally relaxed. Heavenly!

The proverb-like haiku at the top came to mind this morning while I was basking in the heat wrap. I was thinking about the past year. Especially my broken jaw experience and the pain of the presidential race and transition.

I shared the haiku with my gifted therapist. She was back from the Washington, DC Women’s March, so I got her first-hand impressions. Fabulous. I felt sad I wasn’t there, but delighted she walked 12 miles on Saturday and I did not!

Though pain isn’t the major theme of my life, it’s a minor theme. Not to be dismissed or ignored.

Truth and pain are strangely intermingled. I don’t want to miss the truth about myself and my situation that may be revealed in this presidential transition. There’s an opportunity here if I’m willing to listen to it, explore it, and learn to live into it instead of hoping this will all be a dream that ‘flies forgotten at the break of day.’

It’s easy for me to see how others need to change. I wonder how I need to change, given all that has come to stay.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 23 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Oversight

12 Comments
January 17, 2017

Winter Palace

ice-formations-wisconsin-dells-wi

Huddled ranks
Soar toward heaven
Stand guard
in ice-plumed headdress
before spiked doorway
Distant turrets beckon
Enter
if you dare

***

My first thought when I saw this photo was Narnia, under the spell of the Wicked Witch — who, of course, was eager to entice at least one vulnerable earth boy to her icy palace, deep within her icy world. Have you read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis? If not, get hooked and read the entire series. At least twice! Enter, if you dare….

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 January 2017
Photo of ice formations taken by walcek on 16 Jan 2017
in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, USA
Photo found on the Weather Underground App

Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Invitation

6 Comments
January 14, 2017

Breath of God Unseen

wind-sculpted-drifts-martin-nd-13-jan-2017

Breath of God
Unseen
Artist of my heart
And life
Breathe on me 

The wind is cold
Unyielding
To my vain cries
For mercy
Breathe on me 

Evening shadows
Lengthen
In fading light
Brilliant
and foreboding 

Deep blue sky
Darkens
Trees bend and sway
Breath of God
Breathe on me 

It’s late afternoon. This morning I woke to this photo on my weather page. I thought immediately about my life and the way God’s Spirit has blown through and around it, unseen and unbidden.  

Looking back, I’d say the outcomes today are beyond my wildest dreams. Not that I’m perfect or successful or even ‘special.’ Rather, this is about contentment. 

I’m at peace with myself, though not always with situations in which I find myself.  Or even with my behavior. Nonetheless, things have changed in my spirit over the last several years. 

Today I have compassion for myself as a child, as a young teenager, as a wife, mother and grandmother, and as a retired professional. I rarely struggle with feeling like a fraud, or with harsh self-talk that belittles me or accuses me of being The Problem with Everything. 

I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’m saying I’m at rest with who I am and who I am not. Especially from the inside out. The part that really matters. 

I like what I see when I think of myself as a huge pile of snow, sculpted by God’s Spirit through winds of change. I know, things aren’t exactly spectacular in the world right now. It’s just that today I’m at peace with myself.

Thanks for reading! I pray you’ll have a peace-filled Sabbath rest.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 14 January 2017
Photo taken by Brian Bender at Martin, North Dakota, USA, 13 Jan 2017
Found at Weather Underground App

Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Unseen

26 Comments
January 12, 2017

My someday list

My someday list
Of dreams come true
Spreads heavy with its weight
Of years across my life
So many yet so few

What now I wonder wistfully,
Is this what yet remains —
The scattered remnants here and there
Of life and love and mountains scaled
Now fading from my view?

Someday is now my yesterday
Of dreams no longer bright –
The muddled brilliant afterglow
Of memories tucked away in scraps
Sweet pangs of love and life and death

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 12 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Someday

8 Comments