Featured post

Benediction

The whole World is sick in mind, body, spirit, and heart. Our heads ache, our insides churn, our chests pound, our lungs burn, and our b...

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Cyclic (Persephone’s Dance)

With thanks to Cosy Sheridan for the mental prompt


Brown Seeds, Bright leaves, Green Boughs, Berries; Shoots and Blossoms, Blooms fruit and swell


Cool winds, snowstorms, fresh’ning breezes;

Grey rains, Ice rinks

Puddles, Swimsuits


Dusk and bonfires, 

Dark skies and hearths, Dawn and snowdrops, 

Day, Sand and Surf


Spinning, Turning, 

dried leaves to snow; Circling, Whirling, 

Live, dance and grow


Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©️ 6 August 2023

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

We March


Like the Burning Bush, 

we burn but are not consumed. 

Neither drive nor ire. 


I have been considering this week which burns brighter: 


Does love or hate, determination or stubborn will, fury or desire flare up and become embers that glow and last? 


Do our flares of intention become firestorms that destroy everything in their path or burning bushes that draw others to the flames, warming and fanning our intent while not burning out and flaring to a blinding flash?


Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 14 October 2018

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Compassion, Affinity, Neglect, or Rapport?


How many people actually pay attention, are truly aware of their surroundings, feeling other people’s joy, pain, wonder, and confusion?

 

How many notice the fragrance of nature’s growth or inhale the stench of human-made refuse;
assuming that ordure is all that there is?

 

How many well up with tears over a stranger’s sorrow,
smile with pleasure at the sight of a smiling dog or a laughing child;
not too self-absorbed to react viscerally to someone else’s emotion?

 

How many care about anyone other than themselves,
every other living thing in the world,
accepting the sentience of others unlike themselves?

 

Who among us worries as much for strangers
on the other side of the world, the other side of the tracks as we do for the things we want for ourselves?

 

Is empathy a lost art, a word with no longer any valid meaning,
has the reflective bubble in which we now exist replaced the faces behind us in the mirrors of our own egos?

 

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 11 August 2017

 


Friday, August 09, 2024

Outside-Inside-Out

After a year of 2020 Vision


of looking inward with forced introspection, 

have we become agoraphobic or socially inept?


If given the choice, will we venture out of doors? 

Like a cooped-up dog on the first day of outdoor sniffs after a long winter, will we give a joyous bark to announce our return or doubtfully stand wary on the front stoop?


We have learned to hibernate, to dwell alone, together staring into little boxes and large screens, to live in stasis.


We huddle in our own safe bubbles, longing for the return of our lives, like the Messiah returning us to what was—to the shops, parks, clubs, and the garden—just not that Garden.


It tempts us with its proximity: outside events, work, school, travel, and other people; dressing in real clothes, wearing a watch, wearing lipstick, going bare-faced, and seeing other people’s smiles. 


We can’t wait, or are we not so ready?


Time has changed us over the last year; we are set in our new ways, lazy, unfocused, unregimented by the world’s plans for us, the requirement to go, do, and be.


For the many people who felt alone before this “we’re all in this together social bubble”, — they are now on the inside, looking out — and uncertain if they can once again learn to live by being on the outside looking in.


Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 13 April 2021

Tuesday, August 06, 2024

Hiroshima, Dresden, or Nagasaki

More wars to end war;

definition of despair

death doesn’t halt Death.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©️ 5 August 2017

Saturday, July 27, 2024

Maelstrom

Why do we always pray for peace but never give thanks for peace when we are lucky enough to find it?


Why are we seemingly incapable of making Peace rather than constantly waging war against each other and ourselves?


Why do we always react in retrospect but never learn from and teach history? 


Why aren’t we taught to look backwards so as to be able to think first and move forward with our feet on the ground instead of our heads in our hands?


Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©️4 May 2024

Thursday, June 06, 2024

Salute


Grids of gravemarkers

Rows of Flags


21 guns’ boom

Flyovers roar 

21 notes hang in the air

Drum taps and bugle soars


Memory of youthful faces 

superimposed on ancient miens 

Frail but determined,  standing or in wheeled chairs


80 years of alliances, pride and sorrow, tears of memories and honour


Never Forget them


Rest easy; we have the Watch


Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©️6 June 2024

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Kintsugi

(with thanks to Cosy Sheridan)


Some days, my cup runneth over

Sometimes, the mirror cracks

Every once in a while, I drop everything and accept the jigsawing of my life 

A little urushi,  a sprinkling of gold dust, and with patience, my broken pieces become once again whole, though changed forever 


Ronda R. Scott-Marak

©️ 30 April 2024

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

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


Monday, January 15, 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