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

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