1-10: Poetry in Autumn: 30 Days of Poems for Life, Love, and Creativity.
.10 Love Chosen
The nurture of a parent in the face of a stranger. Love built in the womb of the world. A choice made just for your sake. Given a place, while so many others wait.
Believe in your dreams. Champion you in a world of possibility.
Carry your heart. Your blood, not linked, but a story inked by deliberate pursuit.
Take the late-night phone call. Chase your soul. Love you back to whole.
Guardian. Teacher. Lover. Friend.
A look past your flaws. Paths connected by pause, long and shallow.
Love, chosen.
.09 Go Back
If I could go back
I'd love you less
Tell you less
Give you less
Know you less
But I can't go back
So, I'll go forward
Heart open, but not to you.
.08 Run
How long have you been doing this; you wonder as you pick up your phone to check the time.
It’s early, but not so early that your regular loop won’t already be full of folks chasing dreams and escaping demons.
It’s become so regular, life before it is hardly remembered. Everywhere you’ve lived, every place you’ve visited, every vacation, holidays, weekends, 4 am before long flights, and 10 pm because of late train rides. It’s been with you.
Friends, memories, and milestones, all connected by this thread, always visible.
This morning, you’re not feeling motivated, tired from yesterday, but motivation has long been your tertiary reason.
In a few minutes, you’ll be grateful you made it out, yet again, one foot in front of the other, before the rest of your world comes crashing in.
A chance to take in the day before it is written, reflect on yesterday and make better decisions.
Moved by the desire to get a little bit better, never left without a lesson.
Freedom, reflection, challenge, the mountaintop and the valley all at once. The sum of life’s purpose. To try, and try again.
A daily reminder that you are stronger than you thought possible and yet more vulnerable than you’ve ever been. Holding tightly to the strides, endorphins, and miles as beacons of your effort and work.
Tomorrow, you’ll do it again, for all the right reasons and some you can’t quite put your finger on.
Run.
0.7 Equinox
A bit slower the day goes, holding off the cold, as if aware that winter is approaching.
Morning coffee, accompanied by a crisp breeze, circling through a cracked window.
A walk in the park, auburn leaves crunch under the feet of neighborhood children.
Brisk air, demanding a jacket. Sunlight obliging the treasure of change.
Green all around, trying to last, somehow more beautiful between tangerine flash.
Scarves over sunburnt shoulders, holding on a moment longer to summer stories.
Early evenings, wrapped in the pashmina of honeyed tea and delicate conversation.
Festivities linger, harvest and treats, waiting to be discovered and unwrapped.
Autumn arrives, always a welcome surprise, ushering away the heat, and whispering the welcome of a new season.
.06 Free to Be
The way you speak.
The way you sway.
The way you play.
It is perfect.
I can see ancestors reflected in the tinge of your golden hoops.
I can see freedom in the spirals of your unbraided coils.
I can see liberation in the brightness of your smile across an ebony face.
Your Black is beautiful, soft, precious.
Free to be.
.05 POV
It all works out.
It was hard, but you made it through.
You finished even though you didn’t want to.
You’re ok, even though your heart was scorn.
Sadness didn't drown you.
Defeat didn't keep you.
Despair didn't reach you.
It all works out.
.04 Forward
Another image of a child, barely alive, pulled from the rubble in a land foreign to me.
Forward.
Choose a side. Now.
Genocide. War.
Forward.
Has the silencing of human hearts always been the cost of invisible borders?
What is the cost of peace? Why does it cost anything?
Forward.
How can you run from bombs you cannot see; how can you escape when there is only freedom in the sea?
How can you live when your death has been pre-determined by a power unknown to you?
Forward.
Keep moving forward. Working, scrolling, living. How can we?
Do something, say something.
Forward.
.03 To My Father Asleep
The space is settling in.
The one between us.
All of the unspoken words.
The hurts.
The wishes, with nowhere to go.
The memories, once treasured, now sting with pain.
Delight replaced by sadness.
Hope replaced by reality.
In another life it could be different, in this one it will not be.
.02 Love Is
I love you, every day.
Holding hands on the train.
My favorite snacks, but in your bag.
You taking off my boots. Me putting away your shoes.
Up early to pour your coffee. Up late to pour my tea.
My emotions on your sleeve. My embrace puts your worries at bay.
Hard days, good days, all the best.
Tough talks. Long walks.
No chain of command. Team. Making dreams work.
Lazy Sundays in your shirt. Nicknames. Midnight laughs. Giving all we have.
Each other. Forever. Together. Love is.
.01 Seen Trying
In pursuit of dreams, hobbies, and ideas.
Our greatest obstacle lies in the minds of others.
What will they say?
What will they think?
Amateur, new, novice. We all must start here, at the beginning.
Vulnerable, but trying.
Afraid, but trying.
Bare, but trying.
Trying to be.
More creative, more known, more honest, more open.
Stare uncertainty in the face, and step across the starting line anyway.
Take up space and take your place.
Be seen. Trying, striving, doing something your way.
