Category: Poetry

Instructions for this Life

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

There should be clear answers
But there are not,
There ought to be specific directions,
Instructions in a manual of how to operate
This vessel,
In this life,
But there are not,
No “How to”,
to be in different modes,
Different states of being,
In times of joy and great despair,
Instead, one is left with hearsay,
Lessons,
from others who have traveled,
Down their own paths,
This wisdom shared to guide in the unknown;
Herein lay the hope:
There is no one right track,
No one right way to traverse
This path you tread,
You lead;
It is unpaved,
Meant to be worn by this very trek,
Thereby shaped by you.

Midnight Deja-vu

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

I don’t want to go back,
But I am unsure of forward;
Frustration meets me
In this state of being
Stuck;
Home is where the heart is,
Still, a place is needed,
To be,
For one to be lifted up
By land and
Held by space,
That which is affirming and accepting,
And welcomes you to its setting,
I am working on that for me,
For us,
After adversity jettisoned us
From where we had
Only meant to be temporarily,
Somehow, I had forgotten;
Midnight,
Deja-vu,
Online,
I am here
and now looking,
For a place,
the next move.

How (A Man’s World)

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

“It’s a man’s world,”
they say,

But someone still
Needs to teach
The little ones,
Gender irrelevant,
How to do,
To survive,
To get by,
When a “man” is gone,
Not present,
Never present,
Or passed on;
What of little girls never taught
To change a tire;
Or mow the lawn?
We teach her
To understand dependence,
Believe it,
Then rip off the illusion
With age;
Man, woman
Mortality is the great equalizer,
Teach the little ones, all:
How.

White Feather

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

A white feather,
From one of my ventures,
Resides on my vehicle dashboard,
The air through my windows on a hot day
Lifted and carried the feather
In flight,
As such things are meant to;
Scurrying to recapture my feather,
I am reminded
It was never mine,
It never grew from my body,
And yet now I hold to it
As if it were a part of me,
In a way, it is,
The remembrance of its coming to be with me,
And the miles,
Moments,
Mishaps and memories
I also collected with it present;
The feather,
Worn but white,
is a symbol
Of what I have been through,
Carried by the wind,
To always make a landing,
With grace,
Wherever I may descend.

Butterfly Returns

~ Vanessa, She of Letters ~ Leave a comment

Butterfly went home
After their first flight;
Home to cocoons
And caterpillars,
Who each longed to know of their possible future,
But could not yet understand
What air beneath one’s wings
Could feel like,
Each at their own time to cocoon
Metamorphosis awaiting at their own pace,
In their own way;
Not all will get to fly
For some time is much shorter
But they all change,
They all in the end are freed
Of corporeal vessels
Of various form,
Even if they will never know
The flight of a butterfly,
They all may appreciate
The diversity in their shapes
And the cycle
That unites them all.