Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Life and Death

March 30, 2020

Beneath trees of my childhood | Photos

Beneath trees
of my childhood
memories flood
my eyes with
dreams and sorrows
packed within
the space of one life
gazing at tamed
and untamed beauty
underestimated
until this moment
of imminent loss

Below are photos of old trees, including palmettos and water oaks, plus the river in front of the house my family lived in during the 1950s. Even though years have passed, and the old house has been turned into an elegant piece of real estate, the trees we played under are still standing. The final photo is an unexpected gift from one of our visits—a mama carrying her two opossum babies.

I grew up under these trees every day from age 7 l/2 to 13. The Spanish moss is probably the same moss, or at least its prolific offspring.

I’ve included one photo from 1996, the year Sister #3, Diane, came to Savannah for a last visit. She had learned weeks earlier that she had ALS. At her request, we drove out to the old Montgomery house for her last visit, this time in mid-winter, at low tide.

Nature and old photos have a way of cleansing us. Cherish your old photos if you still have them. And remember that someday you, too will be cherished in old photos.

Happy Monday, and thanks for visiting.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 March 2020
Photos taken near Savannah, Georgia, by DAFraser in 1996 (Diane), and 2010, following my father’s memorial service

7 Comments
March 24, 2020

Maybe it’s only in me

Maybe it’s only in me
This welling up inside
Like a relentless canker
Reminding me daily
That I‘m not in charge

Bump it and it screams
Look at it and it glares back
Boredom or contempt
written on its face
caught in Trance-mode

plus interruptions to
make its point over and
over all evidence to the
contrary we should try
this suspect remedy or that

or maybe it would be better
to downgrade the pandemic
and reopen for business
a most humane approach
to business as usual

Yes, I can turn off the newsfeed, and often do. Not because I want to live in the dark, but because the alternative ramps up my sense of dis-ease.

We’re in a crisis greater than the coronavirus. A crisis of leadership at the very top. I fear this more than the health crisis for which there seems to be a difficult and effective way of at least slowing it down.

We need time. We need patience and good neighbors. This world and our nation will not be the same when we wake up from this global nightmare.

Together, we can make it. Divided, we’ll inflict more damage than necessary. It’s time to give our health experts the stage. And yes, Mr. Trump, sometimes the cure can seem worse than the disease.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 24 March 2020
Image found at greeleyschools.org

2 Comments
March 23, 2020

We don’t marry disaster | Happy Monday!

I wrote this poem in September 2017, nearly one year after our 2016 Presidential Election. The situation today is no better than it was then. Even so, there’s reason to hope on this Monday Morning, March 2020.

We don’t marry disaster
It marries us
Unrelenting drought
Genocidal ethnic cleansing
Polio and opioid epidemics
Avalanches of pain and anguish
Wild fires breathing fury
Hurricanes and floods of destruction
Nature’s fury turned inward
Human fury turned outward
Multiplied exponentially

See the pictures in my scrapbook?
Like pages of a newspaper
Good news one day
Disaster the next
See that man who’s smiling?
That beautiful woman over there?
Those precious children looking your way?
The young people who think no one is looking?
There they were just yesterday
And now…..

What’s to become of us?
The ‘us’ that doesn’t exist anymore
Families torn apart
Friends for life now foes forever
Enemies within and without
In whom do we trust?
In whom do we place our hope?
False saviors arise from glowing ashes
Snake oil dealers hawk their sleazy wares

I get up in the morning
And look outside, up toward the heavens
Where the bright face of a newly waning moon
Reflects the light of a new day just dawning.
Two birds swoop silently together into an oak tree
High overhead a silver airplane leaves a misty trail
Fluffy clouds drift beneath a deep blue sky
Signs of hope and reason enough to get up
And live yet another day in my small corner
Of this world filled with small people,
Large hearts and infectious smiles.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 8 September 2017, reposted 23 September, 2020
Waning Moon image found at moodymoons.com

2 Comments
March 22, 2020

another free concert

Feeling my way
down unexplored paths
nature surprises me
with unexpected glory

Songbirds clear their throats
early in the morning
tuning up for a day-long
cacophony of competing trills

Trees once bare lift up
spring’s new growth
reaching for the sun
to warm chilled bones

Here and there
early-bird trees burst
into bloom eager to be
the first with the most

Unorchestrated beauty
combines its collective throat
to offer another free concert
no tickets required

There’s much to be said for living in the moment. There’s also much to be said for the orderly parade of seasons. Not because they’ll always be with us, but because they remind us we’re in the hands of a Power greater than ourselves. A Power already present whether we see or feel it right now.

Nature’s annual spring gala invites me to take deep breaths and exhale. I’m not responsible for holding everything together, or changing the course of world history, or what other people do or don’t do, no matter how distressed I feel about it.

Praying each of you has a day filled with unexpected beauty.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 22 March 2020
Photo of Spring in Bucks County, Pennsylvania found at wallcoo.net.

9 Comments
March 19, 2020

all the king’s horses and all the king’s men

The taste and sound
of denial parades daily
before clamoring cameras
unaware of disconnects
between reality on the
ground and fake scenarios

Propping up the current
prince who wants to be
king takes effort of the
most subtle kind if one
wants to retain favor
as well as political clout

Looking on I’m reminded
of all the king’s horses and
all the king’s men who
couldn’t put humpty dumpty
together again despite
best efforts to salvage him

and if it weren’t so very
personal I could laugh
at this show of barely
clothed disinformation
parading before cameras
as the real thing it is not

or better yet I might try
raging in disbelief though
today I’m grieving the loss
of our small fragile world
never to be put back together
again despite its deep flaws

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 19 March 2020
Image found at businessinsider.com, as of 16 March 2020

10 Comments
March 17, 2020

Sent from above with Love

We were promised
The sun moon and stars
Greatness enlarged
Beyond royal majesty
A thorough cleansing
Of the putrid swamp
And happy days
Are here again
Given the right mindset
And bank account

Today it all comes
Tumbling down to
Moments of stark truth
And reluctant recognition
While flowers of the field
Here today gone tomorrow
Exhale fresh air
Of poppies and daisies
Sent from above
With Love

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 March 2020
Image found at medium.com

2 Comments
March 15, 2020

uncertainty

silence tiptoes
through the valley
searches for truth
hidden beneath
veiled madness
reverberating
through airwaves
relentless and
undisciplined
first one thing
and then another
without rhyme
or reason
torn into pieces
lives and hearts
skip beats waiting
for the next
moment to fall
redefining
everything

That’s how I’m feeling today. Listening to POTUS talk about the corona virus, it seems he’s making it up as he goes along from one day to the next. Picking and choosing what he thinks someone out there wants to hear? Wanting to show he’s in charge?

I’m reminded again that my life isn’t defined by POTUS. Yes, his behavior and undisciplined mind and feelings matter. Yes, he makes what’s already difficult even more difficult.

Still, he doesn’t have the power to define who I am. Today is Sunday. A day to be wise, truthful and happy as I learn to enter the fray one fiery sunrise after another.

Parts of Psalm 23 come to mind, reworded a bit.

Because You alone are leading me,
I have more than enough
to walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
especially when I fear I don’t have
what I need to get from here
to the end of my earthly journey.


© Elouise Renich Fraser, 15 March 2020
Photo found at churchofthemessiah.com

4 Comments
March 13, 2020

Sunrise | Mary Oliver

You can
die for it—
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India,
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

c. 1992, Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems, Volume One, pp. 125-126
Published by Beacon Press

Dear Mary,

The deep breath at the end of your poem got me. No, make that the repeated deep breaths you would take for all of us. Not just for yourself.

There’s a dearth of deep breaths these days. Instead we seem to prefer eruptions of hot anger, fury, disbelief and righteous indignation. They’re often carried out via Twitter.

Sadly, there’s plenty to die for these days. Things haven’t advanced that much since you left us. Still, I’m intrigued by your additional way to enter the fray. Instead of offering ourselves up as martyrs, or turning others into martyrs, we might try taking a deep breath and entering the fire by way of ‘fiery’ happiness.

There’s still something to be said for fury. Especially when we’re being deceived by many of our leaders. I fear we have a long way to go, especially here in the USA, before we’re skilled in happiness that knows how to enter the fire.

If you read this anytime soon, we would be honored to have you take some deep breaths for all of us on this planet. I think we need a jump-start on happiness that creates “an unforgettable fury of light.” The other plan, social media burnings at the stake, isn’t working for us, despite the raging fury.

With gratitude and hope,
Elouise

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 13 March 2020
Photo found at pexels.com

5 Comments
March 12, 2020

Unwelcome truth

Sometimes truth
drops bursting
through dark layers
deep beneath
my sea of normal

What is this and
why now and am I
all washed up
flailing uselessly
in this murky sludge?

Tentacles reach out
pulling in strained
nets of strangers and
enemies I’ve never
Seen or met before

Looking around
I take stock of
unwelcome truth
long gone underground
waiting to be acknowledged

I want to rant and rave about something. Or swim in an ocean of poetic images. But the ‘something’ that keeps haunting me is Trance.

Why? Because it’s complex at every level. A reality that both attracts and puts me off.

But Trance won’t be kept waiting. What self-evident truths already swim beneath the surface of my everyday life, unacknowledged?

This might be a slow process. Nonetheless, I’d rather be a turtle making it across the road than a squirrel, possum, or crow caught in the headlights. Though there is something to be said for flaming out.

Thanks for visiting and reading!
Elouise ♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 12 March 2020
Photo found at shutterstock.com

2 Comments
March 6, 2020

From where I sit today | Politics

We have yet again reduced our integrity as a nation by resorting to a white-male-only race for the Grand Prize, President of the USA.

Cloaked in our national Trance, we appear unwilling to acknowledge our collective history, or make changes from the top down. Instead, we find ourselves yet again fighting from the bottom up.

I know whom I don’t want as President of the United States after the next election. I also know I won’t have as President of the United States a woman of any color at all.

Our nation remains deeply invested in Trance mode. After centuries of practice, too many of us are highly skilled in stepping around and over our inglorious past, making nice, and believing we’re the greatest.

In addition, we’ve been bought and/or sold to the highest bidder so many times we don’t always recognize when it’s happening.

This doesn’t mean past elections were simply another version of what we’re seeing today.

Forget about Russian or other foreign intrusions into our elections. We have uncounted, unaccountable home-grown intruders flying under the radar as well as in plain sight. They’re enabled by our current President plus too many national and local leaders willing to tolerate injustice in order to maintain their own political agendas, life styles, or access to the Good Life.

For each woman who announced her candidacy to become President in this environment, I say Kudos! The crushing weight of USA-style white male dominance began early in our history. What you have done was daring, courageous, and visionary.

I’m not saying women are perfect. Nor are we, on our own, the solution to our descent into warring madness.

I am, however, saying we, as a nation, cut off our own hands, feet, and huge portions of our brains and hearts when we ignore, belittle or misappropriate the gifts of women in leadership.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 March 2020
Image found at learn.kqed.org

2 Comments