Spring, here you come, like an old friend
Still as colourful as I remember you
I want to declare my undying love
But I know you won’t stay, you never do
Caress me, let me breathe you in
But leave no marks on me
I am not yours if you are not mine
Your love engulfs me but makes no promise to stay
How long must I chase you from forest to forest?
And though you keep your vow to always return
I want a love that never leaves
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Spring
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The beautiful one
I wonder sometimes what your version of beauty will be
Will you marvel at sunsets behind bright red mountains?
The kind that you find in the place you were born
Or will you dream of marrying the sea?
And love all its waves, its ever-changing moods
Perhaps you’ll feel at home amongst the big crowds
And laugh your best laughs in human filled spaces
Will you challenge your maker, and call him many names?
As you explore the planet from one sky to another
Until you return home to a place we call God
Will you grow up to love the laughter of children?
And ask me one day about yourself as a child
To which I will tell you, you’re still the most precious of them all
I wonder sometimes what your version of beauty will be?
But oh when I watch you sing and dance like a bird
I know music will follow you wherever you go
And I know that you, little love, will always be beautiful
Like the dew of heaven, at midnight, in spring. -
The Art of Becoming
There at the Louvre we stood
With pictures we’d taken along our journey
Of neatly arranged things on clean sterile surfaces
Only to realise- this was not art
Because art had to be raw, art had to be honest
The untameable offspring of the unrevised truth
The radical declaration of the whispers unspoken
The stitch sewn to hold the widening distance between us
The last act of surrender, to nothingness, to air
We had to embark on a new journey to freedom
To dig out the raw from the place where we hid it
And finally to become, to become, to become -
Somewhere down the line
I’m nineteen years old and my pockets are empty
I sit in a room and it’s full of light
The kind of sunray that invades a room at 4pm
Begging me for attention one last time
As the sun gets ready to go to bed
I wish I had more to give than just a glance
Perhaps someday, I tell myselfI’m twenty five years old, my pockets are better
I check my watch and he’s late again
Give me the patience to not get mad
When the morning comes and I wake up feeling
Like someone dismantled me when I was asleep
Pieced me back in a hurry and left out some parts
Such mornings will pass I tell myselfI’m thirty years old, my pockets don’t matter
I sit in a room and it’s full of light
I hear the sound of laughter as she runs towards me
With a little pot and a wooden spoon
I could kiss the sun a million times
As she falls into my arms and makes me complete
This is the day I’ve been waiting for -
The silent goodbye in Things Forgotten
© Zdena Middernacht 2017 Take a pen and begin to write
Start with the things you miss the most
Memories of things that never happened
Work your way down to the ‘what ifs’
And then to the ‘almosts’ that only happened in your head
And finally end with your hope for the impossible
And say the silent goodbye
Then tear the page off, make a new start
Keep it in an old book you’ve always loved
Like Verses on Things Forgotten
Mark a page that means something to you
Like Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Put some rose petals to keep it scented
The idea is you never open it again
Perhaps someday your children will find it
Or maybe your children’s children
Then they will know
That you too have known what it is to lose
Precious things that were never yours
What it is to let go
Of things your hands have never held
What it is to say goodbye
Way too soon after a first hello
Take a pen and begin to write
Start with a name, and then a place… -
Wild stream
© Zdena Middernacht 2017She looks me in the eye with a look that seems invasive
‘Tell me how you feel?’ she asks
I say ‘I don’t know.’ trying to see what she’s writing in her book
Wondering if I should quickly think of a word, any word
It doesn’t come to me.She gives me some paper, says I should draw something
‘I can’t draw in pictures, I can only draw in letters’
She tells me to draw in letters how I feel
I can’t find the word in the languages I know.Do all feelings have a name?
Those wild streams in the mountains,
How come they don’t have names?I feel like that wild stream in the mountain
Not just any stream,
Just that one in Zonza from three summers ago
If you can find its name
I can draw it for you. -
The Raging Fire
She’d walked many times in the forest alone
She’d befriended the trees and the signs of spring
It’s not that she didn’t want to walk there with you
It’s that the forest is beautiful and she loved you
With a love that raged like a wild fire
She was afraid to burn the forest down -
Thoughts of Home
Let us go someplace that’s fit for insomniacs
Someplace we can sit outside on nights like these
Gaze at the kind of night sky that never hides Orion
As the heat of the night crawls over our skin
And when daylight begins to sing its songs
We can walk barefoot in the dark red dirt
Let the sunshine massage our tired backs
And the air bring to us the scents that we miss
Let us go back to that place called home -
Talking to strangers
I sat next to a woman, at the park, on a bench
With a smile on her face like a permanent scar
She watched life around her as stars watch us from the sky
Distant, removed, like she knew something we didn’tShe began to speak to herself
“Was there ever a sadder thing to wonder about
Than the ‘it might have beens of the road not taken
The silent ‘if onlys’ and the lonely ‘what ifs?”Then she kept quiet as though expecting an answer
I looked around first, then began to whisper
“I’ve learned to hold back what is too intense
When there is no container to contain it,
No comforter to comfort…”She interrupted me before I could finish
“Oh the fear of knowing and not being known
Of remembering and not being remembered
Because to be remembered is to be known and to be known is to be loved
Because…”“There are other things too,” I interrupted impatiently
It was my turn now, she had to let me finish
“There are other things too beyond what words can string together
Like the ugliness of the truly beautiful
Or the fatigue from a race that never begun!”She looked at me for the first time
“You are too young, far too young!”
She stood up slowly and looked at me again
With that smile on her face like a permanent scar. -
Wake me up at 3am
There are no labels in this time of night
No masks nor names nor expectations
The air is honest and the dew is real
Silence hides nothing and in still darkness…
Whatever little light there is shines brighter than a winter’s day
Wake me up at 3 am
So I can go back
To who I was when the night was young
Portraits in Letter 