L O V E

Courtesy Google Images

Linking with Poets United for the Midweek Motif ~ Love
 Brought to us by Sumana

Without love, the rich and poor live in the same house.
 ~Author Unknown

I never cared much for diamonds

they cut skin and pocketbooks

it has always been about 

love and what my heart felt

I never wanted to be a gold digger

sounds too messy anyway

give me a heart of gold and soft kisses 

and I will follow you 

to your one room shack

and work two jobs

to make it all work

yes love has led me

along a rocky path

and I have stumbled down it

with an awkward grace

there were times I questioned my decisions

but now I have no regrets

every fall has refined my heart 

like the polishing and cutting

of raw diamonds

if there had not been my first husband

I would not have 4 people

I cherish in my life

and if there had not been 

my second 

I would not have my Becky

for each gravel road has

led to a beautiful palace of family

rough rivers leading 

to a breathtaking sea

and the amazing part it this 

*****

through it all

the love gets stronger

with time

it's comfort grows like 

trees shade in evening

and after all

I never cared much for diamonds

they cut skin and pocketbooks

it has always been about the love.

©Carrie Van Horn 2019

Occupy God's Table

God provides all the essentials we need

wonderful lighting

 fragrant flowers

utensils to utilize

food for nourishment

 and a place to sit

yet I have so often

preoccupied myself

with striving to attain

all these things myself

filling my mind with worry

emptying my pockets of bills

serving only to exhaust

all the energy

God gave me.

When I think of the word "occupy"....so many things come to mind.  In the dictionary it says that occupy is to take or fill up,to engage and employ the mind,to take possession and control of, and to hold.  It seems that the things that we choose to occupy our lives have a hold on us one way or another.  Either they have a hold on us or we have a hold on them.  Hopefully our choice is something worth holding on to.

Linking with Poetry Jam

and Imperfect Prose with Emily

 

Feast

Magpie #86

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.  ~William James

There is a feast of options

on the banquet table of life

we can sip it's warm brew

and all it has to offer

and then sit back and read between the lines

of what may lay before us

giving us the ability

to choose our next move

who will be king

and who holds our happiness

that is in our hands

and on our tongue

...we can decide

to swallow

 or to just spit it out.

Monumental Choices

Magpie #65


God never makes bloodless stoics; He makes no passionless saints.
~Oswald Chambers Cabbage



We build our own history like a monument for all to see
each decision and every action
a portion of clay and mortar
spreads and forms
whether it
becomes
a wall
a bridge
or beautiful monument
depends on us.

All God's Children

Smoldering Fires,Clarence Holdbrook Carter, 1904-2000

Columbus Museum of Art

Magpie #64

My mother is a poem
I'll never be able to write,
though everything I write
is a poem to my mother.
~Sharon Doubiago

Like a mother God holds us in His arms both protecting and preparing us for the fires of life we may face

yet like a small child we wander off too impatient to listen and wait

like an old man experience reaches out with the wealth of ware and wisdom within it's hands

yet like a capricious scarf in the wind we either take hold or drift off unaware of the lesson we had.

~I have always believed that you can take two different people, and give them the same experience,same mother, same sphere of influence, and same adversity, and one will choose to go with the flow and strive through the situation, and the other will kick scream and fight there way through causing themselves and those around them nothing but strife. ~

Somehow in my prompt I strayed away from the mother theme a bit, and went more with life, and choices, but I do want to take the time to observe  Mother's Day for all women, not just those that have given birth.  Having lost my mother at a young age, I can testify to the fact that most women have such a nurturing spirit regardless if they bear children or not.  Throughout the years I have had so many women I have known become a mother figure, and give support and guidance when it was needed in my life.  They have been a blessing and a force of hope in the empty places of my past.  So to them I say thank you, and to all women everywhere I want to say

Happy Mother's Day!

A Life Like Helen Keller

Magpie #63

"The kaleidoscope of colour which is my life, shows the interesting choices I've made along the way."   ~Antie Koekie

I have seen only a few lives like that
the ones that stradle time with tattered wing

piercing through the barbed wire fence

of all we perceive that cannot be

they defy the odds as if miracle's child

reaching out with a unrelenting force

holding a will to thrive instead of survive

within their chest

making us believe in the beauty of adversity's

strength to charge us onward

to the place no one dared tread

proving the human spirit is both

resilient and a vision to behold.

I have always been in awe of the life of Helen Keller. and all that she achieved in her lifetime.  She overcame so many obstacles that most of us would have not attempted.  She is truly one of my heroes of the 1900's.  She gave humanity so much beauty and strength of spirit.  Her sparkling life will certainly be shining through out time.   For in the end we are not remembered for what we tried to attain in this life, but what we gave of substance to the lives of others, that leaves a lasting mark.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Helen Keller

A Stranger Unto God

Our hands hold the power to reach out and to receive

and so do our eyes to look up and to truly see

our feet possess the power to walk away

from the world's dangers

and so to our ears to hear and consider

the words of a gentle stranger

our tears contain the power to wash

the shroud that blocks the spirit's view

and so to our knees to kneel in darkness

and humbly find the truth

for each heart has the power to

hold what it has not

yet so many choose to simply be

a stranger unto God.