Poetry - Lynn White

  Breaking The Ice It needs strength to break the ice when it’s frozen as solidly as silence. Or so I thought. It needs strength to break the ice, to break the mould and reform. Or so I thought. But just suppose, the ice gives up it’s power and allows the colour   to break through, bright so the delicate flowers can form, can bloom, can flourish fragile. Will they then open up through the self shattered ice, and melt the frozen silence to make a space, an opening for a warmth, that will shatter the now thinning ice? I think so. https://lawrencehouse.ca/breaking-the-ice/

  Home Coming I think that today will be my home coming day. The day I’ve been waiting for, when I’ll come back. to where I came from. Back to here, where I belong. Even though, I was never here before, never in this place, never with this person. I know I’m home. I can feel it. And know I will stay and that it and you will stay with me. I must go outside sometimes, leave sometimes, of course I must. But I’m floating free and I will take it all with me. It has become part of my being, so I can’t move away. Can’t separate us. This place and this person, have engulfed me. Surrounded me in sweetness and brought me back from wherever I was, Brought me home, made me complete, but still free floating, carrying them with me always. It’s the day I’ve been waiting for. https://www.hiraeth-book.com/product-page/hiraeth

  Hindsight We thought we’d done it! Created the basis for a future based on peace and love and civil rights. Even a pandemic couldn’t stop us at Woodstock. We were unstoppable! In diverse countries we saw the rebels become statesmen. We thought the struggle was over. And now with hindsight, I wonder if we would do it again now we know what happened next. And if I could go back with that knowledge, would I want to? Would I want   to face the person hindsight made me. And with hindsight, would I be there for me to find? https://pondersavant.com/2021/02/22/who-am-i-other-poetry-by-lynn-white/

  Who Am I When did I last know who I am? I wonder if it when I was a child, when I made up stories   from my imagination. Was I separate then from the imaginary children   with imaginary parents   and imaginary friends. knowing where my story began   and where I ended. I don’t remember. Perhaps the story ended before I began. Perhaps the two began together. Perhaps they may end together, separately or eternally   entwined,   inseparable.   I cannot say.   I never could. Did I ever know who I am? https://pondersavant.com/2021/02/22/who-am-i-other-poetry-by-lynn-white/

  I Am A Child I am a child of the revolution created by the wake of fascism and imperialism, that sought to construct   a more just society. I am a child numbed by poverty,   stultified by working class conformity, of a mother who wanted better for me, but also wanted to keep me the same. I am a child of these contradictions who became a rebel   in the cultural revolution of the rock and roll generation. Who was liberated by student life, by control of fertility, by other places,   by the music and art   all parents hated. I am still that child. This is what made me. This is what shaped me and became part of my present,   became part of my future. Sometimes I have tried to escape it. Sometimes I still do. https://pondersavant.com/2021/02/22/who-am-i-other-poetry-by-lynn-white/

  River I look into the river and see myself in reflection. Colour fast but unstable, I move helplessly in it’s flow. I am constantly being moved and changed, but left stationary, moved but not moving on   like the fishes and pebbles.   Here I am, disturbed and abstracted, surrounded by this rippling, babbling, watery world,   which leaves me unclear who I am and, more unclear about the solidity of my background and what is happening around me. I look into two worlds which are intermingling, becoming inseparable before my gaze. My own distorted image fades and breaks with the images behind and beyond me in the background of my life. This river is becoming a metaphor for my own confusion. For the displacement and fragmentation I feel inside.   I am in danger of being broken up and washed away. Unable to bring myself together, I remain in pieces, undecided, lacking definition. It is also a metaphor which stretches beyond my person,   into the confusion and fr...

  Remembrance Don’t be sad. I remember that once you were golden. Now the gold has darkened to sepia but sometimes still the light shines through in flashes of the old gold when you remember. Don’t be sad. I still remember   the gold and nothing lasts for ever not even memories. https://thedrabble.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/remembrance/?fbclid=IwAR0_QR2kfiSGD5nOBKNO0Ci3eTg6EfFrp56_D6emUmzvWdEzqC9qggq5oio

  All That Is Solid There’s an ill wind blowing, gale force at least laden with ice and snow a real blizzard, so keep your head down, head for home, don’t let it in close up the gaps and wait. Wait until the storm passes leaving all eerily quiet. Wait for the sun to return bringing rainbows. and the breeze to grow gentle with a sweet breath and a warmth to break the ice with colour. Wait for the delicate flowers to show through the shattered soil, melting the frozen silence. Make a space then, an opening for a warmth, that will shatter the ice. Yes, even the solid will melt away and make it all worthwhile. https://www.amazon.com/blizzard-Nightingale-Sparrow-Literary-Magazine/dp/B08WSFX17T/

  Glitterati See how they shine, hair sprayed and polished, lips glossed, sequinned gowns shimmering like sapphire stardust to march their sparkling eyes. But I wonder, if you peel them   like the ripe fruit they seem, will you find lusciousness inside or only dry flesh and a dusty kernel, no stars or sapphires, only dust that’s lost it’s glitter. That’s when you’ll know it was all just art. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1070035

  Where The Lost Children Go My mother told me that   my sister has gone to Never Never Land. It’s where the lost children go, those who don’t find their way home and those who fade away and die like the wild flowers I pick for the house. My mother told me that they stay children for ever and can play all day long. It sounds like fun there but my mother says she will never let me go. She told me the children there will grow wings   and become angels. I think that when my sister gets her wings she will fly back home. My mother says no but I shall wait. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1070035

  https://www.facebook.com/nightingaleandsparrow/photos/pcb.1109344206181224/1109344089514569

 https://www.facebook.com/nightingaleandsparrow/photos/pcb.1109344206181224/1109344166181228

https://www.facebook.com/nightingaleandsparrow/photos/pcb.1109344206181224/1109344129514565

  It’s Only Make Believe? The little cinema was packed, even if fictional, films about the locality were rare. And later, in the bar there was much discussion. The shots of the sheep blocking the road were appreciated. Well, our sheep were famous for their techniques of blockade. This was no fiction. There was insider knowledge here! It was the mass action that was shown.  It brought the occupants out of their cars to wave their arms and shout in angry frustration. But the individual acts of defiance by escapees were not shown. This was considered regrettable. It was felt the film should have acknowledged the action  of a single ewe lying nonchalantly chewing  on the tarmac while the cars stopped  and drivers moved rapidly from “awww cute sheep” to louder and more frantic hooting  and then to arm waving and shouting outside, There was no discrimination, after all. Old cars, new cars, large cars, small, the ewe would eyeball them all impassively. Locals just...

  Better Together We will always be together, said my little sister if she felt lonely or if we were sad. I would give her a hug to comfort us both   we will, we will. We will always have each other always walk together even if broken into little pieces even if distorted by pain we will pick up the pieces somehow and put them back together even if they’re re-arranged even if not in the same places we will still be us together. But later we forgot and walked away from each other. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/ekphrastic-challenge-responses-theodore-chasseriau

  What Else Should I Say I unscrambled my thoughts to text you my love. Babe. On Valentines Day   it’s the most I can do   in this strange distanced year when there is   so little new   to tell you. It’s inadequate but what else should I say when it’s your touch I long for, your strokes and caresses and they’re as un-textable as you are untouchable. So what else should I say only that   you’re still the one, it’s still you   I’m looking for, Babe. https://visualverse.org/submissions/what-else-should-i-say/