About a month or so ago, I wrote 2 new poems. Here is one:
Sometimes I dream
that I am a landscape
an earthy shore
pummeled by the waves
of a vast
and mysterious ocean.
Waves of sadness
waves of joy
waves of fear
waves of laughter
waves of confusion
indecision
waves of knowing
wisdom
Crashing up against me
when I least expect it.
But maybe
I am the ocean.
Washing up against the shores
of another
only to find
my own waters
darkened
with envy
desire
outrage.
All my life
I’ve made waves.
Sometimes intentionally
but mostly
unknowingly.
Stirring up the anger
the untold stories
and denial
of others
more fearful
Than I.
Maybe I am the landscape
and the ocean.
My body and experience
Comprised of all the elements:
Earth, air, fire and water.
Maybe every part of me
every particle
is a wave
in one form or another
changing
impermanent
unsatisfied.
Perfect in its
refusal
to be still.
-Cara Cruickshank
And here is the other (which was written with a friend)...
She is not a ghost.
Because I know her
and I am not a ghost.
At least, I don't think so
though sometimes
in lonely evenings
I wonder.
Every day she wanders
quietly through
the parking lot.
Once in awhile
she tiptoes
into a nearby field
and secretly
lies down
in the brown grass
not seeing
that another ghost
is watching
from across the pavement.
She is almost transparent
her pale skin
and dull maroon coat
fading in and out
of the bleak landscape.
She searches
for a bit of color
a sign of life
in the deadness
all around her.
Is she a ghost?
I keep wondering
in the filmy haze
of the barren parking lot.
Or is she flesh and bone
but mostly shadow
like me?
Her soul has gone missing.
Maybe that is what she searches for
in these moments
in the dimming horizon
and the dried grass.
Maybe it was stolen
in the suffocating embrace
of a possessive lover.
Maybe it ran away
from the insatiable criticism
of a doting mother.
Maybe it fled
the lusting gaze
of a distant uncle
who took something from her
she had never offered.
Like me, her unseen observer,
she has just enough life left
to get herself to work each day.
But later
invisible
in the refuge
of abandoned earth
she searches
for the fragments
of the soul she once had.
I am not a ghost.
Because I know her
and she is not a ghost.
-Susan Cruise and Cara Cruickshank
