
even encased, your
vibrancy cannot be held
captive, you gleam on.
© Ali Grimshaw 2018

even encased, your
vibrancy cannot be held
captive, you gleam on.
© Ali Grimshaw 2018
Do your eyes remain dry
cried out from
tears for the one
and one
and one
another one
and years of the countless
ones?
Those ones that were the most precious one
to someone.
My heart beats in you this day as tears run down my face.
Grief’s hand must change
what hope will never be able to.
Before all eyes have run dry.
– Ali Grimshaw 2018
Words are inadequate after another US school shooting. Still I try in the honor of those who fight for change and the grief that countless others must bare.

Locked up, but not away
cherished in a closed loop.
Desire for the everlasting
secured with full disclosure
of our imperfections. Rusty
raw, real acceptance.
The very charged electrical
zing between our eyes that
speak across the loud crowd
like a room gone silent just for us.
Our eyes say, we are forever.
© Ali Grimshaw 2018
Photo take in Vernazza, Italy – Beloved

You may have forgotten
I have not.
The strength of your heart
to carry you across the hard times.
It has never left you to swim ashore alone.
It never will.
Believe.

among the fallen plaster
disrepair, wrinkles of error
some may think irredeemable
not broken beyond salvage
surrendered in thick layers
your heart lies beating.
I hear it.
© Ali Grimshaw 2018

Today I wrote a gift for you
my pen pulled my hand along, (it is braver than I)
it knows how to lay my heart wide open,
like a prairie to the sky
nowhere to hide, expansive and still
miles from adequate for what I wish to give.
© Ali Grimshaw
Originally shared February 2017

Some see your failures
knocked down times in the dirt
I see your bravery for again and again
clear knowing of the cost to living
with your box lid on tight.
Determination to make your own view
a horizon few reach.
© Ali Grimshaw 2018
Photo by the talented Awar Meman. See his work on Instagram at pdxphotographer

© Ali Grimshaw 2018

Upright they stand
(weathered and disregarded)
thinking themselves powerful.
Vulnerable to elements and eyes
yet never losing their dignity.
It is clarity of purpose that
leaves them self assured
while the landscape
is transformed around them.
They will forever remain
side by side, dependable
a community of stone.
© Ali Grimshaw 2017
Portugal 2017

He made the plain and simple
a view of miraculous. With just
a touch. All became encased overnight
by a spell of magic.
A landscape of tiny glass castles.
Her damp feet, nourished soul
left her with a wondering, as if
it almost never happened.
Had winter sun
melted her glass slippers away?
© Ali Grimshaw 2017