a slight alteration not a full smile where teeth reveal themselves just a curled corner of lips lift your cheek rising upward winking your eye those unfamiliar to your face wouldn't notice the half-smirk so quickly retreating behind the coffee mug but I saw it as real as sunrise and I don't need more to know you felt joy today © Ali Grimshaw 2021 dVerse Open Link Night - Come join the fun.
“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.” – David Whyte
tug and pull, I must
still it doesn’t fit anymore
not after this year
hundreds of breaths have past
in between arrivals and goodbyes
and I am changed
now I have new thoughts
I pull on like the wool sweater
you used to wear on your
most difficult of days.
Thoughts that have rooted
myself to you
intertwined with the me
I have yet to meet.
© Ali Grimshaw 2021 dVerse Open Link Night - Join a friendly community of poets.
Happy New Year!
Wishing you deep full breaths of peace.
Remembering I have celebrated while wind rocked our cliffside camper with ocean views and barking sea lions. Grandma's patient smile as we played cards in the warm, small inside. I have roasted turkey while feeling cooked in a silver Tallahassee trailer where there was no cool breeze to invite through the windows sweating through my doubts hour by hour. I have welcomed friends, folks, and yet to know arrivals to my table that was extended, folding out into the living room mismatched plates, chairs, and napkins set with open invitation because all, meant all being in one circle of faces. I have driven from afar to a crisp outside Autumn feast appetizers of touch football complete with commentary by the elder generation, and orange-warm grins around a fire pit concluding with pie topped with fishing stories where we laughed until we cried. This day is never the same I am grateful for this, non-tradition. That my expectations are not there to choke out the one constant, the Thanksgiving that I continue to hold memories of love that never fail to show up on this day. © Ali Grimshaw 2020 dVerse Open Link - Come share a poem and read others from this welcoming community of writers.
In the fog of conflict blinded numbness we look to the leaders to steer, peel back disagreement from the windshield. We wait with held breath for a directive to follow while voices clash, a radio screech between stations unwilling to tune in to clarity. We hope for a brilliant leader to put on a pedestal of responsibility, like the GPS we depend on to find our way the one who will hold the key to making it all go away. Let's reach into our own pockets. What if the driver we seek is us? Not singular but each, all together. The many unified. © Ali Grimshaw 2020 Let’s give thanks for poll workers, Stacey Abrams, fact-checkers — and the weather Thank you to every single person who helped to provide others with the opportunity to vote in our recent election. Together we can, yes we can, keep democracy alive. Thank you Joe Biden. dVerse Open Link Night - Join in the reading and sharing of poetry with a welcoming community.
I want to launch into the air a thousand words of love. Handwritten and in every font, (even the unpopular ones) lines and curves that will rise and carry us forward upon touch, and to accompany these words, send the sounds that bring us alive, like birdsong, a child’s laugh or footsteps echoing toward home. Release them as a million messages to freely be carried by the breezes that reach us all, to land on building tops and crosswalks, to fall in the teacups of the grieving, in the tangled hair of skipping children, to settle on weary parkbench sleepers, cling to the yet delivered news traveling with the sunlight to the next continent, let the words land on the bare hands of the parched and weary like raindrops on the skin of those that need it most.
I pause here to take a breath and now realize you are still listening. How generous of you.
What do you want to launch into today?
I’m listening.
© Ali Grimshaw 2020
Join us for Open Link Night on dVerse
Cee’s B&W Photo Challenge: Outside of Your Home or View – Oregon Coast
Whose fault is it? Were you the one who left it undone? Did she really say say it that way or was it just play? Why didn't you leave sooner rather than later? Did it get better? Was he to blame? Should I feel shame? When did it all start mattering so much? Is it ok to touch? What is there to do? Are you wondering too? Where is the starting line now? What are the rules in play? Are you even in the race? Do you want to be? © Ali Grimshaw 2020 dVerse Poet's Pub - Open Link Night. Come join us here.
The messages kept landing paper birds like folded airplanes from the sky. Confetti of voices wanting to be heard swirling of anger, colors of hurt, colliding confusion spiraling to crash on the ground. We hold our hands out to catch them scattering in the street to pick up the fallen. Each message, a precious life with wings a paper bird in need of repair. We sit in a circle and begin to unfold cupping our hands, just one at a time listening to its life of song. It is like we have always known what was needed. We knew we would stay as long as it took to give the listening for each bird to be heard. It was clear. It was not a burden. As we gently passed them from one hand to another, one by one around the circle, the sky opened to us all. © Ali Grimshaw 2020 dVerse ~ Poets Pub, Open Link Night with Linda Share your voice and read the poems of others.
This poem is a reflection on the writing circles I have hosted. I will continue to offer a safe space of refuge for others to be seen and heard just as they are. Love is always the way forward.
tended affectionately organic prizes plumped primed by summer's passion heat and BB King's blues quenching warmth gathering of sunlit kisses red ripe to tango with your tongue and mine slip into my backyard delight in this tender flesh this ready to please moment of this temporary season. © Ali Grimshaw 2020 (rewrite from 2018)
If I brought poetry to your exhale how would you breathe? If you brought poetry to my cooking how would it taste? If we brought poetry to our conversation what would we hear? Would we notice the moan of wind escaping our arguments, notice the water from our pipes is at a trickle, and our neighbors don’t stand in the front yard anymore hateful weeds encroaching upon our edible garden while voices overrun each other with lawn mower loudness? A muffled fear, like cotton balls in our ears falls free revealing the unison of our currents. If I lived poetry could I see the heart underneath your skin? Would you see me as a life as valuable as your own? © Alicia Grimshaw 2020
dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night - share your poem and explore the poetry of others.
on the beach I begin because now I am ready and so are you to turn our pain into fuel build a bonfire to bring warmth for all now sitting in cold darkness I start with kindling of prejudice add sticks of fear, logs of anger a heavy round of resignation watch the flames ignite to hot glow come close and sit with me add your logs to this burning pyre hate and terror blaze brightly with heat finally an efficient use for their energy let’s watch flames of love devour all that we believe we cannot face to singe away, char and reform all that has been holding us back love knows how to transform create a burning to warm us all through this dark night. come to the beach now we are ready © Ali Grimshaw 2020 dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night – Share your poem and explore the poetry of others.
