Garden of freedom

The prompt for Poets and Storytellers United is to write about a time I surprised myself. Well, I’ve had many learning differences to navigate. I’ve fallen more times than I can count. But every single time, I stood up again. And that more than anything, is what keeps surprising me.

Garden of freedom                                                      

She kept on
loving, living, learning
after the world trembled
the ground splitting
beneath her sanctuary

She crossed
the deep blue ache,
emerging from the water                                     
last droplets
sliding from her skin.

She walked forward
alive
capable,
not by ease,
but by a quiet refusal
to let the world diminish her.

And slowly she shaped
a garden of freedom
wherever her feet fell,
a flower unfurled,
catching her breath
like a blessing,
like sunlight spilling
into a long-shadowed room.

Echoes across the stretched-out land

The prompt for Poets and storytellers United is letting go

Echoes across the stretched-out land

I am Dutch,
my soul raised from the lower lands,
standing tall against the northern wind,
a guardian of Germanic threads
woven through ancient bone.

I do not come in darkness.
I rise in the pink, the red, the yellow of tulips,
a crown of colour bursting
through heavy clay.

My heart and mind were born
under an endless sky
where words are not dressed up
but reveal the naked truth.

An echo of bike bells
drifts through rainy air.
Castles and mills return
across the stretched-out land.

I let go of my roots,
left them for distant grounds
with majestic mountains
and unreal blue lakes.

When I return to my homeland,
street stones still carry
half-faded stories
of my voice
that refused to vanish.

 

The Journey

The Prompt of What's Going On is journey.

I wrote several poems with this title and I recycle here one of the very first poems I ever wrote
This one is from 2007

The Journey

I went on a journey and stopped in Paris,
Taking time to cherish
the splendid statues of yesterday.
I stayed to learn French,
and when I got lost in a dark allée,
I uttered, “Où se trouve…?”
and they showed me the way
to the Eiffel Tower,
with its enchanting lights.

I went on a journey
and stopped in Madeira,
an island in full bloom.
Taking time to smell the perfume
and let the colours caress my eyes.
I stayed with a gardener
who taught me about the bees,
who turn gold dust
into sunlight I can eat

I went on a journey
and stopped in Amsterdam,
taking time for the shops along the canal.
When spitting turned into sun showers,
I bought an umbrella with Vincent’s sunflowers.
It provided shelter for an old lady to her home,
where she wanted me to stay.
She fed me with wisdom
and fine food for the day.

“I will make that journey. In a five-star hotel I stay.
In three days, I’ll go the same way, but then better,”
she said to me on the phone.
She got lost in a dark allée in Paris,
stung by bees in Madeira, and soaked by the rain in Amsterdam.
Reaching your destiny takes time.

Life is simple

The prompt for the local poetry group was Public speech 
The prompt for Poets and storytellers United was to be inspired by a dead tree

So naturally my dead tree is giving a TED talk 😂

The poem is linked to  DVerse Poets
OpenLinkNight #408 

                              

Life Is Simple
TED Talk by a dead tree

He drops his last dead leaf,
gnarled fingers unclenching,
scraping his ancient throat.

He looks at the audience.
Humans
Restless
Scrolling

Then he begins
Stop, people
Just stop

I have watched you for centuries.
You pass me
like weather through bone
heads down,
hearts elsewhere.

Meanwhile,
my tangled roots
prepare for the coming spring.
Flowers rise
from my rotten bark.

Life breathes
through my hollow skeleton
every single day.

So stop.
Inhale the oxygen
I have spent my whole life exhaling.

Everything is entangled.
You are not separate from this dance.
Connect.

The sky remembers you.
The earth will carry you.
Life is simple.

The shape of power

 The prompt for What's going on? is Power

The shape of power

What if you lift the twilight veil
and let your heartstrings unfurl
Release performance
release the fear
of not being seen

Remember:
a flame forgets its light
when it chases the wind

Step back
Sit with your breath
Let life move
through your emptied being
like sunrays do
They don’t ask
they don’t take
they simply touch

Feel how they bend
how they find their way
to warm you,
to illuminate you

Your flame will spill its light
further than you imagine

This is your way of being
This is your power, my friend

The man of action

The prompt for Poets and Storytellers united was to be inspired by quotes from The princes Bride. I chose "We are men of action, lies do not become us.”

The man of action

The man of action
holds a quiet refusal
to carry the world’s shadow.
He lifts light from water
as a mirror for others.
The reflection may waver
as life dances with reality,
but he waits,
knowing silence
will settle the troubled surface.

The law has a house
inside the man of action.
It stands in the shape
of fairness and justice,
a structure that does not fall.

The man of action
walks with vision.
He does not speak of horizons
he moves toward them.
And always,
lies do not become him.
He builds an altar to truth,
never burying it in roses.
It rises warm from the wet grass,
and droplets of trust
will clings to your heart.

Sit by the fire
with the man of action.
Watch the sparks
lift into the dark
And you
You only need to sit,
and breathe,
and let the light touch your face.