One Shoot Sunday and A Child–Purple Profundity: Poetry by Elisabeth Connelley

Good Morning! It’s One Shoot Sunday again! The following is quoted to attribute the photographer and the site that supports and encourages The Poetry Challenge of One Shoot Sunday.

‘Tis good to have choices… Fellow artist and One Shoot Sunday alumnus, James Rainsford understands that and has even suggested an excellent picture prompt challenge. So take your pick. Go on, James offers us five photos.

~Dustus

For more examples of James’ art see:
The Sanctum of Sanity
Poems from James’ new collection

A Child
I sit amongst the trees
the breeze
to take
my soul, I rest in unkempt grasses
cushioned among hills of moss
which grows, where
the sun cannot penetrate
the great ceiling of leaves.
The clover stretches endlessly
to one
lying minute
miniscule
yet a part of such a place.
The leaves quiver,
as boughs are waved
hoping to
catch a
glimpse of tiny angel’s eyes,
they peek shyly ’round the limbs
of one so aged and strong
gnarled trunks
holding
secrets known, before
such rancor
did we
the human race display
upon the dirty streets
and smells
rough chemicals
and poisons we disperse
shall please those of a soul
so fell
the mighty aged trunks
and leaning one by one…
Yet wait,
a tiny twinkle far away,
There,
a child, no more than three
flies dancing with the trees
Just in that moment
when,
the sun’s sharp rays come piercing down
through shadows in the wood
Childish laughter
Pelting,
out man’s noise
His arms outspread
and turning ’round
trees spin above his head
A child will free us all
one day
They shall dispel man’s dread.

–by Elisabeth Connelley

One Shoot Sunday and Peek:Purple Profundity: Poetry by Elisabeth Connelley

Here is entry number Two! There is a lot that can be done with this week’s image!

Good Morning! It’s One Shoot Sunday again! The following is quoted to attribute the photographer and the site that supports and encourages The Poetry Challenge of One Shoot Sunday.

“Hello one and all – welcome to the latest edition of One Shoot Sunday. Normally, you would hear me (Chris Galford) wax philosophic here or provide you with an introduction to our latest photographic find. Today, however, we’re simply going to be providing you with a prompt from an old friend of One Stop’s.

You may remember Roger Allen Baut @ChasingTao from the early days of OneShoot (Roger’s One Shoot Interview). If not, you should definitely take a look now. A talented and friendly photographer, he makes his return to One Stop today with something a little more abstract. Look beneath the surface. What speaks to you here? Let your imagination go for this one.”

Accept Today’s Poetry Challenge!

Peek–Purple Profundity:Poetry by Elisabeth Connelley

snow
snow
and more snow

falling gently
covering
crossing and uncrossing
a toe
stuck up a man’s nose

stolen kisses
objections of wind
shrieking at the seams
of windows
frosted over with steam

reflected
in the mirror over the sink
seen
by eye
at the center of you
peeking

–by Elisabeth Connelley, Purple Profundity

One Shoot Sunday and On The Way–Purple Profundity: Poetry by Elisabeth Connelley

A bit ago, I found something in the blog on Writing Without Paper. An event, activity, called One Shoot Sunday.  Anyone interested can read the full and requested directions there. Part was to credit the Photographer:

This week’s One Shoot takes us to the Isles with English Photographer Fee Easton. Though a self-described “amateur photographer,” Fee’s work is far from amateur. One need look no further than the cathedral pictures below to see some of the intricacy at work. Just take a moment and note if you will the engaging interlace of the shadows on the floor.

Now please, join Fee as she takes the time to guide us through her photographic journey…

~Chris Galford

    Accept the Picture Prompt Challenge!  (please click on the image below to see it in the size and proportion in which the artist intended)

Image by Fee Easton and Granted Use for Picture Prompt Challenge

On The Way

soft moving hands
slide along
the grace
of me
clay
sliding along
the wheel
is it my fingers that create
or the turning of the wheel that uses them
expression cries out in the light of the dark
union found
remembered

–by Elisabeth Connelley, Purple Profundity

Phoenix in the Fire

True Lies
Be careful following
Where others have gone before.

In the forest once
I took a track;
It looked well beaten
As if often used.
But it became difficult,
Branches crossed it low
And I slowly realised
It was made by creatures
In whose veins
No human blood flowed.
But I held to it
Becoming more fearful
With each step I took,
Unable to return.
The path held me
Until edging a precipice
It ended in thorns.
I stood there on the edge
Gazing at a fallen tree below,
Long-dead, moss covered,
Splayed out like a corpse fallen
And thought a wrong step now
And I will join it.
Only by an effort of will
Could I climb the slope
To safety and a true path.

Beware truths apparent,
They may be lies in disguise…

© Angela Grant (Kestrel) 28/12/2003

Finding the Key
It is bright day but here I sit
with darkness in my soul.
I seek freedom but always tie myself
to some place, some person,
some self-imprisonment.
Does this make sense? I think not.
What sense can nonsense make?
What hope can hopelessness provide?
I am split as a chestnut husk
splits falling from the tree
revealing nothing but strange confusion.
Enlightenment I seek
yet feel I comfort from the dark.
For what is hidden can reveal
a wealth of mystery beyond itself.
Layer beyond onion layer, lost in the seeking
of a centre impossibly deep.
What meaning can mystery reveal?
What cipher can disclose plain truth
without a key?
Shall the white mare pass
without me following?
She will stop if I ask her.
She has done so before.
Or shall I hawklike
simply hover and watch
and let another chance slip by
gone in an instant.
No, not this time.
When she passes I will call
and let her carry me
where she will.
Now is the time to take a chance,
grasp life to the full
and run with the wind
wherever it may blow.
At summer’s end let only harvest fall,
let me run on and seek that centre
that I have not yet found
or lose myself in never-ending spirals
knowing that a time will come
outside time itself
where all mysteries will be resolved,
all conjunctions joined,
all solutions found
and the end only disclose
another new beginning…

© Angela Grant (Kestrel) 26/8/2004

Nutboogers! Passionate Commitment Bites Me in the A.. (uhm hiney)

DARN IT ALL!

This is my What the Heckle and Jeckle Face!

I made a comment over on Kathy’s blog, Close the Door and Stay Inside All Winter. And then, I responded to another comment. And then, Kathy had her own reply. It’s what happens on blogs quite frequently!

This morning, I got up and began to do my pleasant normally pleasant morning routine. I became engaged before I finished the first cup of tea. Normally, is not my best decision in the day, to do so before having the third cup. Just ask those who know me! I am particularly enjoying a new blog that I’m writing, which I am keeping private, for now. In it, I’m expressing things that I do not often express and in ways that I do not often express them. I think that I like it, though some of the things can feel ugly in parts. And then I get feedback, and the hidden ‘ugly’ bits, just become normal. (OOOOOo….maybe THAT’S ENOUGH!!!—this is directed at Kathy! Everyone wave madly to Kathy)

But every day, as I finish reading or writing there, I come back to the dashboard here and look at the February Passion Creative Every Day 2011 commitment that I made. And I have posted nothing. Well, I have posted many things indeed, just all privately. So, I am accumulating guilt and some small amount of shame–the shame part is odd for me to do. I’m frowning at the little one jumping up and down waving a hand madly in the air saying…look look at meeee I AMMMM working very hard over hear…do you see me do you?!?!?!

We can all take a moment to sigh and shake our heads, maybe even an eye roll at it. Anyway, when I do commit to something BOY DO I!!!!!!! Even to my detriment! And the things to which I commit, I do not even always realize that I have made an agreement with myself to commit, until I come to an internal and unfamiliar fussing, which makes not so much sense. Fine! It’s the wave of sudden Passion that does it, makes me aware, brings a tacit agreement to light. It can then present me with a difficulty making a conscious choice, to continue it, to decide why I took such a thing upon myself to begin with, and can I make it of good use.

AH HA! A LIGHTBULB MOMENT! Quite often, when I am feeling the most passionate about a thing, I will appear on the outside to have shut down. I will go quiet. Creative thoughts and pondering of all that I just typed fill my head, along with the daily–oh look a chickens, of daily life. I can get overloaded. It can feel, to me, as if there are so many seemingly disjointed things side by side, that there is no adequate way to communicate them clearly, to present an entire picture of me at once that is honest and accurate.

I will also add, before I abruptly end this particular post, that the thought….many minds in many places vs one mind in many places. I shall have to make a decision to consider if the expression is needed or if some of it is coming from being ungrounded and me not paying attention to it. Being grounded helps me to filter out things that are irrelevant in each moment. It also lets me be aware of them, if I choose, in a less blender type manner. (and a voice says..yes but what if sometimes some of the things wanting to be expressed are truly important and you are using being grounded as a shield not to see them, because they quite conveniently don’t fit a current idea of who you think you are) Sigh. Thank you wise teacher( and pain in the ass!) I love you.

Where does Passion go in Winter?

Where is that giggling bounding joy? The one that comes each day of the greening. Pause…inhale…discern…locate… Each new scent. Each new sound. Closing my eyes, following and searching, grinning, opening eyes wide in Joyful Passion filled abandon having located its source.

Spring Joy--elisabeth connelley

Where does it hide in the winter?
OH! There it is….

Scent of Meyer Lemons!

It’s also smelling basil, though I cannot post that one this morning, it got frosted over night on the windowsill! Shhh…ignore that part…imagine bright green and very large basil leaves, radiating light through leaves, creamy denseness upon fingertips…fingertips across lips and inhaled mmmm nothing like it.

I think for me, knowing passion comes more easily with each new sight and sound of the growing season, it is still to be had in Winter, I just need to pay more attention and rummage a bit!