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

Jack Frost

Lightly coating lashes, outline shadow pines,

soft snow feathers float and drift across the night.

Flick’rng ice stars ‘gainst the silv’ry bedtime dark;

indigo canvas, dusted with points of light.

Crystallised frost flowers bloom on windowpanes;

Cold flakes on tongues, 

melt and relish winter’s bite.

Dreamers and rovers soar and tramp atop the ice;

Pirouette and glide amid the snowflakes’ flight.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 16 December 2013

Like Tzedakah

 Use your words like your tzedakah:

with generosity for good, not ill.

Use words like money:

Sparingly when angry or for ill, lavishly in generosity or grace. 

Speak of love and gratitude with full expression, of hate and 

cruelty as a miser.

Be frugal with your negativity, criticism, and disapproval

but give charity, praise and kindness openly, with both hands.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 31 August 2019

Book of Life; the end of the story?

  

 

No, the chapter is unfinished, the penultimate paragraph unwritten,
the final sentence incomplete. 

The verb has stopped its movement, and the noun has gone, never to return.

 

The cantata’s finale?

No, the aria remains unsung; the movement incomplete, the measure unfinished, the chord unresolved.
The resonance echoes still.

 

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 30 May 2022

 

Discordant Discourse

(Dedicated to Andy Dennen and his music)

We are so many individual notes incapable of forming a chord,
only single, miscellaneous notations

Why can’t we arrange our thoughts and words into measures and phrases coming together to create harmony instead of clashing sounds in different keys and time signatures?

We are so used to crashing, blaring, and harsh cacophony that the sweetness of melody has been buried beneath the constant dissonance.

Not that all dissonance is bad;

atonal compositions can be as lovely as sweet harmonies and resolved chords.

Improvisation, the scat of unfinished thought;

cadenzas, descants, flourishes, and unusual intervals are as important to discourse as to music.

Yet, here we are, single notes marching formless and alone with no one to arrange cadence.

 

Ronda Scott-Marak

© 9 July 2022

Twilightening

 

My mind is shrouded with fatigue

My eyes heavier than my will

My body floats lightly yet sinks like lead into the cushions. 

So much to do

So little desire to do anything except lie here, amid the blankets’ softness and listen to windchimes and the songs of birds

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 18 July 2021

Illumination

 

Shining pure Light

Beaming from faces

Sparkling on waters

Aglow in the waves

Dappling the trees 

Moon rippled breezes

Warm as the starlight

Radiant as pearl

Luminous tints

Glistening twilight

Coloured aurora

Halos of gems

Blissful blushing

Exhilarant smiling

Reflected echoes

Circles of Light

Flick’ring crystal

Bright as fire opals

Glimmers like diamonds

in jubilant eyes

Darting, flashing

Light leaping boundaries 

flitting in rainbows

brightening the world!

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 2 October 2009

Blessed Intimacy

 People complained

Computers stole the souls out of phones and written letters. 

They mourned the loss of conversation, face to face communication, coffee or milkshakes after class, cocktail parties before or after shows. 

Then we crawled inside our caves, locked the doors and pulled up the welcome mats, waving at neighbours from behind closed windows and mask-fogged glasses.

All the complaints, from those who whined but didn’t change, turned into paeans of praise for the schools, jobs, houses of worship, and doctors who adapted those computers into lifelines. Phones and monitors keeping us connected, phones and keyboards helping us shop for our needed goods. 

But the connection I cherish the most is the blessed intimacy of live streams and Zooms, connecting me to friends and performances that I would have never known before the separations of the last two years. Without technology, we would have been truly alone in the silent darkness; no music, no pictures, no messages, no jokes, and no warmth of friends joined together from states apart. 

Eventually, we will be joyously released, but I hope we never lose the blessed intimacy of long-distances music and friends

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 28 December 2021

 

Divine Heresy

How many people have reinterpreted and misinterpreted words and beliefs to change the core of wisdom to rename divine heresy?

Through the centuries, we've all been taught to hate, mistrust, and kill each other for heresy;
but it was the truth, throughout time, that it was the extremity of death that kept belief safe.

How many died due to the Heresy of political opinion?

How many were killed because of Heresy of Religious beliefs?

Established “Truth” has had many names, depending on the victors, many contradictions of Truth from Fact. Some perceived truths can never be known, only perceived through one’s own experience of the Otherness.

How do we choose to view the world?

Who do we choose to violate, and who vindicate for their philosophies?

Who gets to make Truth and regulate Facts?

Who has the right to censor our thoughts?

Who gets to define Divine Heresy?

Ronda R. Scott-Marak
© 1 January 2022

Auld Lang Syne

A second’s blink, a pause in time

A minute’s quick, a brief delay

One moment life, next second death

A candle

Breath

Is Gone

Life is quick, as the quick and the dead

And life is short, of moments fast and long

A turn of the head

A wave of the hand

A smile, a kiss, a blink

And it’s over

No time

Use Life

Moment by moment

Precious sands running through cupped fingers

Breaths inhaled sharply, or let out in tender sighs

Laughter, tears, pleasure, pain

Second by second of individual memories

Hopes, dreams, worlds to win, crosses to bear

Love, Hate, Chance

All caught up in an instant

Life

Never forgotten by those still with beating hearts

Life

To be judged when the hearts stop

Gone

History accounts for itself

But only

Life makes changes

Live life

Moment by moment

Time Use chance

Accept love, change hate

Build

Live!

  

 

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©10 October 1991