I am thinking of you today.

"May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God's children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high His love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it" (Ephesians 3:17-19 TLB).

Branches, Petals and Leaves

Morning Glory is beginning to climb...and there is a hanging plant which I bought dying for $2 at the end of the garden center season. Seems to be doing ok. 

These flowers are as big as my head!

Echinacea

Rose of Sharron has finally bloomed.

My Pretty Drummer Friend

Before they left, the clouds dropped

jewels in the lake.

Hidden among the fish and ashes,

the dead,

floating wood, deservedly deserted,

was her heart.

And then one day she announced her perfection to me,

over instant coffee.

Each of her waves became 
curves in my own journey.

As they crashed early on her shores,

I counted the them.

As they greeted me, one by one,

each wave's story had it's own ending.

*****************************************

Now I watch her daily in the same way I breathe.

I've come to know her, as she has known me, 
since my feet were no bigger than her smallest pebbles. 

On some days she feels my tears drop onto her edges,

filling her more and more, with salty sorrow.

She inhales lifelong desires thrown into campfires,

sees the unfinished dreams discarded into the wind over her.

She breathes me to sleep under stars on first warm nights,

I lay on her sands.


She saw my first kiss.
She saw my saddest goodbye.
She held my first child and rocked it to sleep. 
She saw my life turned upside down more than once,
 and somehow, she helped me put it back upright again. 

She wishes me peace.

She shares with me simplicity.

She gathers us all in her arms, floats our mid-drifts,

belly laughs on summer days.

People come from all around 

and act like they know her,and know her moods. 
They mistake her for shallow, perhaps even vane. 
Confidently in their march on sand, they let their children play, 
Yet helpless to her own gravity she is forced to swallow
precious life and floating wood all the same. 

She takes the blame

when we don't know how to respect her.

In winter, resting on cold, she becomes it,

while holding her jewels in places perfect in time.

She holds the land together

as if it might crack as we rumble about.

In long dark days we stomp around as she lies down.

In the cold, she is thick and still

and I am thin and restless.

She receives the melted sun and rebuilds it for tomorrow.

She raises it back up to grow our tomatoes,

our little bobbing butter ball babies.

She brings down my fury, 

slows my race, so I can see her sparkle
 like champagne spilled on glass, 
as far as the eye can see
especially around dinnertime.

As storms invade our space, 

I inhale the smell of the fear of the storm as she stands as my shelter.
And I believe in her. 

They are dumping poison into her,

rings around their ankles,

wading cowardly from land.

What's done to her upsets a feminine rhythm,

Huron's mighty drum.

So delicate and vulnerable, quiet and calm,

yet she roars, waves crash,

topple cabins of guilt

built on cliffs

never meant to be negotiated.

Her power eliminates the tiny empathetic kites

I used to fly at water's edge.

She bangs consistently,

despite what they've done. 

Jets her jewels at me to collect,

take them home

and relive the days of summer.
I wear her around my neck, on my skin and in my hair.

In her perfection

she is bountiful and seemingly endless.

As am I, she says. 

She is whispering of a lifelong friendship

between the two of us.

Timati ft. Busta Rymes & Mariya - Love you (official video) LYRICS

This is not an apology letter.

Hi Dear Friend,

This letter is in response to realizing how greedy I have been recently. I am sure, if you read the last poem, you know how much of it I have kept for my own understanding, and probably mine alone.

I want to tell you that I am sorry for leaving you out at times in the poems I have written. I am sure you have said to yourself, "What the heck is she talking about?"
Editors and critics say, writing like this makes the reader feel inadequate and left out, and the piece takes on a more pretentious feel. It apparently becomes unenjoyable.

They may be completely right. But I just want to clear things up.

A person can't write every line for everyone to understand. It would be like trying to please all the people in her life all of the time. It is impossible, and all she ends up doing is getting tired, frustrated, rejected and feeling judged. Then she goes ahead and judges herself for not being good enough. Who would chose this route in life? Haha, we all know who we are, (or were).

Aren't we valuable, lovable, and extremely interesting exactly how we are, following our passions, focusing on what matters, uniquely to us? Isn't this what we were created to do? Shouldn't we stop the doing,  the addiction to external feedback, filling the hungry vein of validation? Shouldn't we just be, and be enough?

Eat my poem, it's yours. All the words are yours. The meanings they conjure up in your mind and spirit are yours. You are not meant to take mine away with you in a doggy bag. You are meant to help yourself to the sweet and sour of what it means for you.

Anyways, friend, I want to say I am sorry if you have felt left out now and then,over the years, but I did it on purpose, and I hope you still find me of value in your reading selections.

Kim Gun Mo - Beautiful Goodbye 김건모 - 아름다운 이별

maybe words grow

I try to fit these thoughts
into the     narrow rooms      of words
but doors swing open   out they burst
float down long and lonely   bee paths to afternoon paths with no ends
lost off anyone's cliffs
edges of perception   slippery and  full of holes
can't hold anything in
instead of skipping    the show
not clothing the ego
they find a way to just be   lost
not in words   not in a face's embrace   not still they burst


the rhythm of breathing
attitude's the respirator    we suck in the honey
pumps life       like pulling the wings off insects
cut apart   here or long gone   like grandmother's lilacs
flies high     unseen
keeping me alive


those words   drip back down throats
a way of sitting   of hearing once
voiceless birds     who are fine to sing in silence
as the trees know
have grown days    gathered sprout into luscious season
each ring in a trunk   each notch on a stick   each nameless chic
is a tune from beak
this is not nature      human dysfunction


too unsimple to unravel in words
instead leap dripping   with crazy chirping    hollowed echoes   empty
from unexplained leak    drips all the natural solutions
and human falsities        to lies    stalagmites in secret caves
neon vibrations light up caverns     lost is an easy place to find
rooms too narrow      to get intimate    lest by chance, desire's dance


looking down in the water     today its even clear
through ripples only   see what they see    really
pick heads off thoughts
like dandelions    make mother's butter    on a little chin
spread on yoke of her egg     breadth of own shoulders
plough through conversation
hardly even planting a seed     maybe


copyright July 2010, Theresa Ullyot