By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor Dear Friends, most of us would agree that this past year has been extremely challenging if not tragic. Many of you have documented your pain and grief in poetry, fiction, and essays. St. Patrick’s Day is today and Easter is coming up, so it’s a good time for us to transmute…
A Blessing for You — PhoebeMD: Medicine + Poetry
Thank you, Phoebe, for publishing my blessing!
I notice that I haven’t completed a poetry podcast since April 2. However, as you can see on my WordPress blog, I have done some publishing. It seemed easier to publish in on line sites than on my own poetry podcast in my own voice. I have to admit, everything of late has stunned me. I have lost focus to some degree when it comes to the intimacy in my podcasts.
Meanwhile, Podbean informed me my site design would not be supported, so I have chosen a new theme. Simple and clean. Kind of like life could be at this time…at least in an ideal world. https://meelosmom.podbean.com/
What the heck happened? What have we become? I was once a young girl riding my bike and playing with dolls. Now I’m hiding from a pandemic and bullets.
Does this pandemic represent our diseased minds and hearts? COVID-19 has forced us to retreat to the silence of our souls, our heart minds. Can we stand to be with ourselves? Can we cultivate our beautiful garden? Or can we only find comfort in noise (distractions, addictions, possessions). Can we truly see ourselves, love ourselves? Can we truly see and love others? And what about the Other, those who are from different tribes (families, societies, races, cultures).
What is hidden eventually rises for healing as is shown in the response to the murder of George Floyd at the knee of a cop. Racism, social inequities, corporate greed, and other forms of social, economic, and ethical/ moral malaise are symptomatic of another pandemic hidden in our Deep. George Floyd was strangled to death for passing a fake bill, but what about white-collar crime and all the money doled out to corporations while the average American can’t put food in the table with one job? With this pandemic, we suffer from huge losses in income. Our economy is flailing.
Everything that happens daily becomes the memoir of our society and our world. It’s all recorded not just on film (owing to technology) but also in our DNA. The ugly can make us ill. As Caroline Myss writes, “Our biography becomes our biology.”
I want to avert my eyes and deny all that is aberrant. However, I’m simply storing it away, like I do old journals, letters, and photos. Some things trigger joy, while others uproot pain. I think that if I don’t see it, it isn’t there, but it is creating illness.
It’s no coincidence I have taken to memoir writing, exploring my Deep. What have I buried from view? What do I need to heal? Looking at the truth is visceral and, I am told, bold maybe even courageous and healing. However, it is also dangerous. Being truthful to our word can create loss. These kinds of shifts occur because ‘all that is not aligned will fall away’.
I have feared excavating my soul because of judgment and fear of alienation and abandonment, but I see my life from my lens while others, especially members of my tribe, have their perspectives, which they can explore in their own memoirs.
I hope to continue to explore these themes in my poetry podcast and other wetting, and see my morning awaken, as the featured image of this post shows.
https://meelosmom.podbean.com/
©Barbara Leonhard, extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog
Image “Morning Awakening” ©Martha Harris, Martha’s Artistic Flarings, artisticflarings.blog
Recently published on phoebemd.com (PhoebeMD: Medicine + Poetry) as part of my article on infertility.
Broken Womb, Shattered Soul: Living with Infertility (part 3)
The Wound Still Waits
The bandage torn
From new flesh
Releases wails
The wound still
Imbibes air
The scab hides
deep repair
Let it rest. Wait
In time the scar
Records a fate
©Barbara Leonhard, extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog, meelosmom@podbean.com
Image: “From Beneath” ©Martha Harris, Martha’s Artistic Flarings, artisticflarings.blog
Phoebemd.com published the second part of my article on recovering fully from measles encephalitis. The link to Part 1 is provided. The article is based on one of my poetry podcasts on Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul found at meelosmom.podbean.com.
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor
[Part 1 – Hope Was Not a Loss: A Story About Measles Encephalitis]
My experience with measles encephalitis taught me a great deal. The greatest realization was that I could change my destiny. I had every reason to remain in the wheelchair because of the attention, sympathy, and love that not only I but also my parents received because of their poor little girl. But the attention from others could not offset the loneliness, the feelings of being diminutive and helpless, and the boredom.
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If I were an angel in the dark,
I would appear in flames simply
from the radiance of my eyes.
I would fire up candles for prayers.
I would make twilight shimmer
like a mirror still lake.
I would awaken you
from slumber and despair,
gather you up gently,
swaddle you in my gossamer wings.
I would cast out your pain with lightning,
incense your soul with soothing myrrh,
bathe you in waves of forgetting,
deliver you to a vista of light
on a path of comets as beacons.
I would gift you wings,
teach you how to fly through
clouds of many colors,
swing on stars falling into a sea of lights.
I would never leave you
in times of battle or new birth,
the time of the death of your pain
a blazing nova, a new sun.
All of this I would do for you.
Who would know more of the legion of light
than an angel of the night?
Copyright© 2017/10/10, revised 2020/04/13 Barbara Harris Leonhard @extraordinarysunshineweaver.wordpress.com
My poetry podcast, Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul (meelosmom.podbean.com)
Image: “An Angel in the Dark” (original art © by my sister Martha Harris.) See Martha’s Artistic Flarings @artisticflarings.blog
I am honored and humbled to be a guest on Stephen’s site tonight. This poem seems to be getting a great deal of attention since I posted it, so it speaks to our concerns at his time of a pandemic. Thank you Stephen! Your kind words mean a lot.
Image “The Infection” ©Martha Harris, Martha’s Artistic Flarings, artisticflarings.blog
Today we are forced to sequester to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We realize how powerful we are when it comes to our wellness because we can make …
For today’s audio, I am going to turn over the mike to a new, dear friend Barbara who has written and reads a beautiful poem for these days. Please enjoy and follow this beautiful human!
Today we are forced to sequester to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We realize how powerful we are when it comes to our wellness because we can make choices to prevent contagion by following the CDC guidelines and being loving to ourselves and thoughtful of others by wearing masks and gloves if we must be in public to get medicine and other necessities.
While sheltering, we can take care of ourselves by resting, drinking a lot of water, and eating healthy food. We do not accept the fate of this pandemic. Our positive thinking will boost our immune system. No one can take care of our temple but us. We hold the keys to the gate, and we do not welcome tenants who create chaos of our light.
I pray for a vaccine soon, and I hope everyone can and will get one. I know I definitely will.
My sister, Martha Harris, created this amazing image of COVID-19 by layering several microscopic photos of the actual virus together. She calls the image “The Infection”. I think it is a masterpiece.
The Unwelcome Tenant
What is healing
but the stabbing to death of pain,
the banishment of shadows,
the release of sorrows,
the burning of poison arrows.
Healing requires arbitration and litigation,
for Illness takes possession,
the uninvited occupant in our temple.
It strips away a clean visage,
creates squalor and decay,
plants bramble in the garden,
makes infertile the soil,
evades eviction.
Illness commandeers the ego,
becomes its own soul.
This loathsome dweller deceives,
creates attachments,
becomes dependable,
appears useful,
provides false amenities,
orders demolition to the heart,
lays claim to property,
prosperity.
We are healers
who can vanquish this squatter
from sacred property
once we know our powers.
We the are the landlord
who owns the keys
and locks the gate.
We break this unholy contract
wrought by the wretched occupant
that creeps into our house
and garnishes our treasures.
Healing is evicting
that which does not serve,
does not align,
is unholy
to our divine.
©Barbara Leonhard, extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog
Image “The Infection” ©Martha Harris, Martha’s Artistic Flarings, artisticflarings.blog
My poetry podcast on Grief: Fire and Ice, which shares my journey with Mom through Alzheimer’s will be published in segments on phoebemd.com. Here is the first installment. Check out her site. It is a source of poetry and articles on healing. We all need to bolster our immune systems, especially now with the stress and fear we feel in our daily lives and with COVID-19 spreading. Sites like Phoebe’s offer stories and poems of hope and recovery.
The original poetry podcast can be found at meelosmom.podbean.com (Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul). The episode is Grief: Fire and Ice.
©Barbara Leonhard, extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog
Robert Frost once wrote:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Online, one can find many poets who sing about their grief. In this lyrical piece, Frost tells us that we face changes all the time. Eden, our paradise, has been lost. Life is temporary, terminal, and short lived. The sun both rises and falls; the seasons change, and we grieve.
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I have a poetry podcast on Podbean called “Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul“. Let me know what you think!
The post is called ‘We Are Entwined Spirits’. When we feel isolated and lost, Poetry is our medicine.
This podcast has a new poem in it.
Memoirs
Poems are memoirs
Of our human journey
Our life stories
And spiritual quests
In images woven by craft
The history of life in one poem
Comprised of many poems
Each of which is a cell in our ‘bio’
Our biography, graphs
Pictures of words
Poems are lines
Connecting the dots
Bridges to specks of self
From other selves
Poets are space holders
In a matrix
The Tree of Life
The Tree of All
If you would like to contribute poetry to this podcast, you may submit it to me in a Word document attached in an email to me at meelosmom@gmail.com. On the subject line, indicate it is a submission to this podcast. I can fit it into a theme. In the email, include any pertinent information on yourself and publications you want me to promote, especially for the work submitted.
Poems: ©Barbara Leonhard, extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog
Image: ©Martha Harris, marthaflares.blog
Submitted to FREE VERSE REVOLUTION for the January 1, 2020, challenge. The theme is Gaia.
We are holding in the cries of fear,
Refusing to surrender to truth.
What can come of filling the streams
Of Gaia’s veins with our tears but a flood of pain?
Can the rifts in her ancient skin be healed?
Can canyon walls ever merge into a New Earth
Free of grief and loss?
The fingers of the Sun can only reach so far
Into the depths for galactic truth.
Has God succumbed to the Fire?
It cannot be so.
Though dense on the edges of Holy Planes,
Light is there.
Light and Shadow share one spectrum,
Always in battle for healing,
Finding the perfect balance.
Where Earth is upheaved grows new bounty.
The pain of ripping soil births potential,
Shimmering translucent as
Tiny perfect fingers rooting in Time,
Swaddled in constellations
Webbing Then and Now.
Time is connected on all planes.
Today’s prayers heal the past
As it has never ended.
All grief is omnipresent and infinite
If we remain in slumber.
Hope is wholeness.
The future is “I AM”.
Tears heal tears in the fabric of Time,
Filling in the rifts and canyons of geologic upheaval
With Love transmuted into cosmic truth.
We are One.
Our tears are Gaia’s rain.
The clogged well of each heart
Is her burden to bear.
Our actions become her prayers or her curses.
She cries in fire, wind and geologic torment when
We fail to love her power,
Which supports us in the lattice of her cosmic apron
To which we cling as babes born innocent
And slow to awaken to her grief,
Which is ours to bear.
Copyright© 2017/12/10 Barbara Harris Leonhard @extraordinarysunshineweaver.wordpress.com
Image: Pixabay
