What happiness can arrive when sunlight's retreat paints leaves cherry crush, berry swirl butterscotch eye candy walking through an ordinary Monday your hand in mine, we breathe the awe street lined masterpieces colored by a lack of chlorophyll less of something created more today © Ali Grimshaw 2020 Another yummy tree in my Portland, Oregon neighborhood.
Painted leaves sing in unison Unlike music, their song is soundless harmony. This orchestra of glow soothes the tempo of an internal pounding from a day of instruments that refused to play the same song. Fall catches you with muted volume a serenade of equilibrium let the blushing colors sing you home. © Alicia Grimshaw (rewrite of 2018 poem)
tasting sadness on your skin I lean into the space between your peach-warm cheeks glow while shadow-stones play on Autumn's windowshade head to heartbeat I hold you to my chest feel a shift to calm a small sigh from your lips warmly weighted © Ali Grimshaw 2021
Join us at dVers Poets’ Pub for a Quadrille HERE
"Remember your dance? The young girl inside me calls out, "Remember?" Dad told me how, as a baby, I sat on the floor rocking side to side, just smiling. Later I was known to start the day with only one shoe my frustrated mother shaking her head while the school bus left me behind again. I was a girl who thrived climbing trees, running through woods I wasn't hyperactive, just a mover. Running brought temporary relief. The only dancing I knew growing up drill teams of painted girls, performance dancers that wasn't me. Finding social dancing in my 20's was like a drug. Swinging partners in dancehalls escaping thoughts I didn't know how to turn off. Anxiety, the never ending loop of ideas. I found myself in the music. I floated free. It is never too late to turn the music on find your sway, sashay surrender to internal movement Your body has not forgotten. Your brain has many incredible ideas but your heart is the one who knows how to dance with the world. Listen inward find the place where your freedom resides. © Ali Grimshaw 2021
“When Gillian was 8 years old, her hyperactivity — which earned her the nickname Wriggle-Bottom — led her mother to take her to a family doctor. While he examined Gillian, the doctor put on some music and asked Mrs. Pyrke to leave the room with him. “Out they went and the minute they had gone I started to dance to the music, even going up on his desk,” Ms. Lynne wrote in her autobiography, “A Dancer in Wartime” (2012). “What I hadn’t noticed was that his door was one of those beautiful old glass ones with etched designs through which the doctor and my mother were watching.” As they observed Gillian dancing with abandon, she recalled, the doctor said: “There is no trouble with this child, Mrs. Pyrke. She is a natural dancer — you must take her to dance class.” – Gillian Lynne, Choreographer of ‘Cats,’ Is Dead at 92 from The New York Times
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Let's linger in the Autumn glow dusk is on its way to cloak us with comfort ease our worries loose to fall. Pausing here we become one with this seasonal scene of hush before continuing our saunter harvesting what matters most from this day. © Ali Grimshaw 2021 Join us on dVerse for Quadrille Monday HERE Photo take in Portland, Oregon 2020. View of the Willamette River.
What’s missing? she asked herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t know her strengths. It wasn’t that her imagination had run off to have an affair with someone better. It wasn’t that she expected easy.
What was missing now was the risk to hope again. To dream bigger, like a five-year-old coloring with abandon on the whole wall. Markers in hand, in full out play. As far as each arm could reach. Without fear of intersecting lines, sharp puncture points or curvy wide spaces.
What’s missing is the leap, the willingness to let it unfold and seeing herself capable of not only the journey but strong enough to feel all the textures of emotion like carpets of days she had walked through to get to now. She knew her heart would break every day and that just meant that it would keep growing.
Top of the hill, feet on the pedals, hair in the wind, she is going.
© Ali Grimshaw 2021
“In the Celtic tradition it was said that we suffer from soul-forgetfulness. We have forgotten who we are and have fallen out of true relationship with the earth and with one another. Thus, the path to wellbeing is not about becoming something other than ourselves or about acquiring a spiritual knowledge that is essentially foreign to us. It is about waking up to a knowledge that is deep in the very fabric of our being, and it is about living in relation to this wisdom.” – John Philip Newell, “Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul,” The Daily Good
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 Dear readers and followers, here’s a great opportunity for your writings to be read by other writers, and also to find and meet other writers. You are very welcome to share a poem, HERE, at Promote Yourself Monday on Go Dog Go Cafe.
at either end of night there is an opening to light between, "Good Morning" and the next curtaining of eyes there is an opening between what remains on the list the permanently written yet unresolved and the one who holds the pen there is an opening without a defined doorway that resides within all light a heartspace without walls it lies in the pause before the next twilight of the in between rubythroat mellowing to nectarine ©Ali Grimshaw 2021 Join us on dVerse for Open Link Night HERE
she stood for listening
overcoming discouragement
and air that never burned your nostrils
she led by digging weeds with you
side-by-side overheated or drenched.
she never let fear ride in the front seat
and forever reminded me
the sun’s position
changes everyone’s shadow
everyone’s
©Ali Grimshaw 2021
Quadrille Monday on dVerse Poets Pub – Join a friendly group of poets HERE
Photo taken on a family trip to NYC. I just love this mural.
Guardian Lying on a bed Of soft clover And gentle ferns I gaze up at you- As your limbs Reach to the sky I cover my eyes In an attempt To shade from The sunlight Streaming down- Noticing my Squinting eyes You quietly call The gentle breeze To craft a lovely canopy From green leaves Allowing me to Once again See you clearly- Here we stay Until the sun Begins to set Until you Reach down Lift me up And tenderly Place me In the crook Of your strong branch- I rest my head In peaceful sleep By Kelley Morris I am grateful for Kelley's permission to share her poem from a recent writing circle. I continue to meet amazing women across different time zones. You can find more of her poems on her blog, pianogirlthoughts.com Writing together provides a mirror for us to process life in a place where we have all agreed to listen with compassion. Come join us for a writing circle. No experience needed. All voices are welcome. Self-Compassion Through Poetry: Writing Circle, Friday, August 13, 9:30 – 11:00 am PDT. Register here
