Ic’d Coffee , sigh, it was given to me hot only a few minutes ago

My coffee is cold

I can’t drink it fast enough

Warm mug, teeth chatter

Ronda. R. Scott-Marak 

©️16 January 2024

The Mirror Crack’d

We know who they are: flawed, self-serving humans: greedy, narcissistic, entitled.

We know who we are:

flawed, self-serving humans;

charitable, empathetic, inclusive. 

Demonstrate your plans, your intentions, your methods of getting there.

  

Give answers, ask questions, display concern and intelligence; think before speaking and answer with research and facts.

Do not give oxygen to the flames of hatred, amplification to the bellicose tweets; enlarging the caricatures and re-broadcasting the false narratives, satire,  and hate. 

Promote your values, speak your truth, spell out your plans, speak softly with strength, not loudly with derision and weakness.

Do not cover yourself in the refuse of your opponents’ lies, the stench of their name-calling, or their abusive rhetoric. 

Make Your points with determination; don’t reinforce Their weaknesses with Boldface Italic diminishing Our strengths.

Stop doing their promotion by inflating their lies and alienating your own allies by promoting your own.

Think beyond today, past next month, further than next year; compare now to then before actions affect forever. 

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 15 January 2020

Travellers

We are like Freedom Riders on the bus to D.C.;

We are strangers on a Death Train to the Camps or the Kindertransport leaving home.

We are shipmates on the Mayflower, the Titanic, or Lusitania;

Flight crew near the Bermuda Triangle or aiming at the Moon.

Our directions are not under our control; our final bearings have been given to the Winds of Change, and our destinations are unknown. 

We travel together around the Sun, chased by Comets, Constellations, and the Moon;

Some may enjoy the trip in first class, some go as ballast, and some as crew,
but we all have no exit.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 11 November 2023

Carry that Weight

(With thanks to Lennon and McCartney for the title)

We are all like Atlas, carrying the world on our backs.

The weight of worry, the clash of cultures, the fires of spewed hate, the cold depths of despair, the winding fury of stormy relationships, and the stillness of the eye of that storm when peace finally comes.

We spin, trying to keep our balance, turning toward the light.

The lives we bear are fleeting, and the years seem endless as we turn our laden shoulders, aching heads, and sore souls to the past and our faces to the Dawn.

Hoping for Death or a Gorgon to turn us to dust or stone to alleviate our infinite burdens.

Complete with the grit we earned, the cracks we caused, and the mountains we built, we carry that weight.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 29 August 2023

Faults

Groaning, fitful Earth

Underground, shifting fissures

Rumble, shiver,  cracks

Undulate; become chasms

Fluttering hearts, trembling limbs

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©️22 August 2023

Spring(ly)

Delicate stems bend, and petals shed in the April rains and March winds; early buds freeze in two-faced Spring.

 

Tulips and daffodils, croci, and hyacinths bend down before the weather’s onslaught.

Mismatched blossoms, missing random parts, determinedly turn their damaged faces to the meagre sun and strain to lift their bodies out of the clinging mud.

Why are the heralds of Spring designed with such frailty when early Spring is so harsh?

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 12 April 2022🌷🌼

Christmas 1914

A single voice, a Christmas Carol, a song of Stillness and Peace;

Another voice, and many more singing different words to a familiar tune.

Guns stopped, silenced by shared humanity and blended harmonies; peace loudly proclaimed by handshakes, shared smokes, and songs while war stopped for the Eve and Day to celebrate a birth.

Moments out of time; whose were the first voices raised in song, and whose the first gunfire when Day was Done, and why start up again?

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 25 December 2019