A Grieving Heart is a Door Ajar,

 Linking with the Sunday Muse for Muse #162

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Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows... ~William Shakespeare

 

Flight is but a haunted memory

so I don’t need wings to travel far

regret can be a boarded window

yet a broken door that stands ajar

heartache is a house that creeks and moves

like an old woman’s legs in winter tend to do

we hold our memories

and peer at grief

believing in ghosts

 others may never see

yet still they leave and appear

 like finger prints on glass

drinking from cups and saucers

we will never have

they follow and lead

they hold our hand

they make us stumble

yet help us stand

for yesterday was a lost child with tangled hair

today is a black bird with a lonesome stare

tonight is the moon’s reflection everywhere I go

and tomorrow a baby I shall nestle close

the reminders enter from near and far

broken and bent like a door ajar.

 

 

 

 

Regret Is a Two Lane Road

Image Source

Linking with The Sunday Muse for Muse # 16 and Imaginary Gardens for The Tuesday Platform

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Life is an adventure in forgiveness. ~Norman Cousins

All the places I have been do not whisper in my ear like a shy child

It is the places I have never been but should have gone

That tap me on the shoulder in the middle of the night

Demanding my undivided attention

Regrets are like that

Cousins of a certain loss

Yet strangers

Divided like the lines on a road

Branches of the same tree that head in different directions

One is the grief of mistakes made

The other the loss of opportunities that no longer are ahead

That we should have grasped whole heartedly when we could

For the regret of our mistakes is a sorrow that can be forgiven

Sooner than a country mile

But forgiving ourselves for words unspoken or visits to loved ones never taken

Is a heartache that holds a certain agony

That can be a life long journey to let go.

Note:

My maternal grandmother had agoraphobia, and the only time she left her home was to vote.  As a child I never really realized the abnormality in it.  She just never went with us, and we would bring back dinner for her sometimes, even though she thought that you had to be careful about restaurants cause the food could be tampered with.   As years passed, and I had a home.  I settled into a routine of my own, and though I had gone on several trips out of state as a younger adult and into my 30’s I found myself having a certain anxiety with trips that went very far out of town.  I decided that I had agoraphobia on a grander scale.  I could leave my home, leave my town, but the minute I am heading on a long trip far away, I am in a mental episode of anxiety.  I think I have shared this before on earlier posts, but I felt this important to share again because it has caused me much regret when it comes to who I have visited and where I have gone. It seems I have really held myself back and stifled my own chances of seeing great things, or visiting those I hold dear.  The saddest part is, there are several people that I have lost the opportunity to see again, and I only have my own fear to blame.  This is a hard road to take when you carry that kind of guilt.  I can only say, I am working on it.  May your roads ahead be full of opportunities taken.  That is my wish for us all!

Wisdom Has Callused Feet

The Mag #302

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. ~Muhammad Ali

If I could go back in time and look at my wedding through my divorced eyes what would I see? Would it be disappointment or a waist of time?

A bouquet of regrets held by a fool in white?

If I could go back to my childhood roots and see myself skipping through eyes with now slow shoes what would I see?  Would it be awkward steps that lead to the wrong road? A journey of ignorance or a blind traveler that still rushes to the unknown?

Truth is I just can't go back.  There are no time travelers and no magic rabbits in hats.

This life I have been living is a course that must be  hardily explored to advance.

For wisdom is a raw experience that requires exertion to truly understand.








When I look back over my life I realize that there is no way that I could know then what I know now.  Even if I could travel in time and give my self a million warnings, and believe me I needed a million of them, it just would not be the same.  I am who I am today because of all the troubles and the many blessings combined.   They have all played a part in molding me into the person I have become; a person full of compassion, hope, love, tolerance, a little bit of wisdom, with hands that know how to let go of regrets, and a few calluses to prove it. :-)

Broken Records

Charlotte Gainsbourg, AnOther

The Mag #153

"Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened"

~T.S. Eliot

The song of old regrets plays like nostalgic records inside my broken heart and weary mind.

I carefully place each one on the player and replay each song until I have memorized every line.
Then I dance with each lament like lovers close enough to keep whispering in my ear.
So the breath of one hundred aches and grievances sing softly yet they sing clear,
with the cadence of a blues song it is an elegy and never rings with glory like a hymn.
All the records play only sad songs that speak to my heart a penance for my lost sins,
and I keep them deep in a forlorn place where my heart slips down into sorrows like too much wine,
for the dance of life has awkward steps that fall short of perfection each and every time.




I am generally a positive person and do not dwell on my mistakes and regrets as much as I probably could, but when I finally do it is always a dance of grief inside of my mind....ruminating the undone and should nots like old broken records stuck on a certain line.  Somehow, this photo just pulled that out of the heart of me and, place it upon the page. 

The Present is the Inheritance of Now

"A day is Eternity's seed, and we are its Gardeners."  ~Erika Harris

If only we could grow time like corn in a field...

for it does seem that time has wings of its own...

and it wrinkles all in its path...

...but what a beautiful ride that it is...

...and at times it can be confusing and seem to spiral out of our grasp...



 then pieces seem to get lost along the way...

 and focus all we may the clock keeps ticking at the same pace...

as time ripples outward to tomorrow from yesterday...

yet, no matter how you look at it...time stops for no one,

so listen to the words of dear Emily who said:

"Forever is composed of nows."  ~Emily Dickinson

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

All photos courtesy of Google Images. :-)

A Fool and a Cigarette

image by R.A.D. Stainforth

The Mag #149

"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes."

 ~Carl Sandburg, "Prairie," Complete Poems, 1950

When we are 16 we smoke all our tomorrows

like cheap cigarettes and strawberry hill wine

at an endless hangout at the corner store...

yet when we are old we smoke all our yesterdays

like one fine cigar and rare expensive wine

at a place we wish we had gone and can no longer afford.

"Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward." ~Soren Kierkegaard

Wishing Tess and everyone at The Mag a wonderful and Happy New Year!

A Legion of Ghosts

"True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen."

~Francois de la Rochefoucauld



All my regrests haunt me like a great legion of ghosts.
They lurk waiting to appear in the places I miss most.
One sits at the piano that I never learned to play.
Another echoes in the voice of the words I never say.
Some linger on the road side of the places I never went.
Others roam to distant places in the letters never sent.
There is one that resides under glass upon a higher shelf.
While another stands in a stranger's shoes reminding me of myself.
Each one follows where I go like a lover still in a love thats new.
For I embrace them close and hard and thats just what lovers do.


Linking with Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads


I do believe in ghosts...I know people that have seen them....and I believe it to be true.  Of course my poem is not really about real ghosts, but I do believe that there are many things in our lives that can haunt us just like an apparition or ghost.  The only difference is, we have the power to let these things go, or we can choose to continue holding on.

Light Weight Like Paper Heavy Like Words

Big Room, 1948, by Andrew Wyeth

The Mag 132

"There's a certain slant of light,

On winter afternoons,

That oppresses, like the weight

Of cathedral tunes." 

~Emily Dickinson

Some memories pierce through my mind

 like winter's morning light

 through a window pane

 moves through a big room

then like weary guests

 from a long journey

 others sit at my table

with the weight of old regrets  

together we relive the past

walk the halls

of torn down houses

remembering the laughter

trying to forget the loss.

Sight

I chose to be blind.  It was easier that way. With eyes closed like a window shade I refused to see the truth.  No light could come in and warm my broken heart.  Some burdens are too heavy to bear all at once, or alone so I did not look.  I threw away my map and I gave no glances to the east nor to the west.  Not knowing was the only comfort I could grasp.  Fumbling in that kind of darkness....is a long walk to any light. So denial became both my friend and my enemy...engraved in one shroud of regret, that hurt to wear, and was even more painful to take off.  I can see that now, but in the midst of the storm, I was blind.

This was written for Kerry's Wednesday challenge at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads.

It is my attempt at a prose poetry piece....a big weakness for me.  This is something I really went through and never want to have to face again.  The only thing worse than our heartaches in life...is our children's.

A Thousand Directions

Magpie #50

Life is a thicket of choices

a thousand roads leading towards

and directing away

from where I stand

a thousand books and road signs

pointing, but for life there is no map

the exact distance between

where I am and that place I could have been

is a jagged branch I could never truly climb

for the winds of regret only sway us

and serve to waste our time.

Also linking with Poetry Jam

Each day is an opportunity to travel back into tomorrow's past and change it. 

~Robert Brault

The Two Sides of Regret

One Shot Wednesday

It is a broken window that has two different views

looking out it is a distant ocean that we can never swim

and looking in it is an endless beach with sand that lingers

forever in the shoes upon our feet

It is a jagged tree that has only two branches

the one we grasp tightly afraid of the fall if we let go

and the other we can only gaze at for it is far beyond our reach

It is a torn map with just one chartered road that leads two ways

to the east it is a place we wish we could forget

and to the west it is a trip to a aged loved one we never took

that we shall always grieve

Thief

Regret has an anthem that echoes in the silences of the night.

It blankets with doubt, and steals rest with it's own blunt knife.

All the missed calls, cracked china ,and dying gardens of the day,

are like open caskets that were meant to be closed, but I will look anyway.

The luxury to forget all the mundane and colossal will not be found,

for all the shadows blends in like a face is to a shroud.

Yet, like a long illness, rest will certainly come soon enough,

as it passes through the remains of what could have been ,and all that never was.

Prompt 2  Insomnia

A wonderful site for blogging poets is Poets United.

The Stab That Does Not Kill

Magpie #19
They say that a paper cut hurts worse than a stab, and Mr. Hoffman knew first hand that was right.
For he was watching his lawyer and Mrs. Hoffman's, slowly divide both their lives.
The sting of the silences had torn loves core, and emptied the words that were left.
Leaving a woman he once held, filled with morsels of regret.
Now its down to a mortgage, a dog, 3 kids, and 2 cars.
While he is left with regrets of his own, and a broken heart.
Afterwards he will lay with a remote control, and a dog on a roll out bed,
with regrets slicing torment inside of his head.
For these things were the culprit that gave the stabbing blow.
That have left him to live as half the man he had once known.

A great site for writers  Magpie Tales





"Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce? It doesn't actually kill you. Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck. It should. When someone you've promised to cherish till death do you part says "I never loved you," it should kill you instantly."  ~Frances, from Under The Tuscan Sun