If you've ever felt pretty
Or valued so wide
The growth kept on greening
The branches confide
As though the surroundings
Would have ever more
Of your blooming and greening
Towards expansion du jour.
In years of your habit
Maturing in height
Someone decides
"I'll prune you tonight."
For any who have had their
Trust pruned or sheared,
May your branches recover
More lush than last year.
-Kelly Voelker
It was here I learned
The meaning of bleak
I felt it in my bones
Here week after week
The word whispered
Behind my mind's eye
Suggesting a feeling
Of others before I.
-Kelly Voelker
The breeze at dusk was kind and good
So some clouds went as far West as they could
To watch the sunset glow and dim
As shadows drew the landscape grim.
-Kelly Voelker
Within our own canopy
Of perceived reality
Relying on none
Alone in the sun
Besting our own
Personal records
Refraining from drama
Obeying our accords*
Between our own
Conferring aspects
Keeping it pure
Keeping it abject.
-Kelly Voelker
*accords - official agreements or treaty
*abject - (of a person or their behavior) completely without pride or dignity; self-abasing.
I knew at once
When I finally faced
The unmaintained road
That led through the "waste"
I'd gone into a realm
With nowhere to go
Nothing to count
Nothing to prove
My tumbleweed escorts
Lined the sand road
Holding together
A strip of their own
Tiny birds chirping
A dainty soft song
Protected in thickets
Of plum brush now bare
The road led to a warm, sunny trance
Not to a what, where or when kind of place
Thoughts couldn't stand it
For beauty won't dance
With the intellect suitor
Who does not stand a chance
In the innocent place here
Not shown on a map.
-Kelly Voelker
In the distance a sea of soybeans
Unfolding into waves
Varying shades of gold and brown
The dawn shown brightly on the ground
Breaking the rays of light and sight
Three coyotes single file in flight
Following rows toward destination
Leaped above like dolphins do
To see above the height of bean
A glimpse of wonder
Seldom seen.
-Kelly Voelker
What I can't bear to hold
What I'm feeling unfold
What I cannot express
I reflect back to my chest
And take a deep breath
It slows the pace down
To a mortal moderation
Exhaling the excess
I realize the nexus.
-Kelly Voelker
Through the lens of a watering pond
I see the sweet face of a fawn appear above me
I feel a love as if for my own
I express through intent my most sincere
Offerings to quench and make thrive
Every move it makes after
That those big brown eyes shine
This new angel moves on in the morn
Along fences to woods and onward through corn.
-Kelly Voelker
The birds feed their babies
The rabbits snip flowers
The wind bobs the tree limbs
The sun shines for hours
All is in rhythm
Of movement through time
I sit in wonder
A witness as kind
As the force that designed it
As if it were mine.
-Kelly Voelker
The present moment is an aggregate or ratio of recent past, moment by moment activity and expectations of the near future.
You can never fully live in the present moment. You may acknowledge being in a window of time which cannot be duplicated and resolve to be grateful for it.
By the time you acknowledge a precise moment, it is the recent past.
As soon as I decided to be in the present
A thought came in quickly and I became hesitant
What is the state of being
In the moment of time
When you've completed a sentence
That ends in a rhyme?
Is it a window of creation
A sentence of life
A subject, a verb and intention sublime?
Does the present change form
When it's watched or observed
Instead of a symphony of senses and nerves?
And so it's a noun of the brain not the mind
The "present" is a boundary for a broader perspective
To focus and define would defeat the objective.
Is turns to was
Dandelion flowers to fuzz
Blossom, fruit, rot
Who becomes what
Character is . . . then was
Blink in then blink out
Housekeeping transforms
A place after forms
Have been there then left
A shutter speed holds
The various temporary forms
But still . . .
Is turns to was.
Why? Just because.
-Kelly Voelker
Turn under your memories
Turn under your gloom
Hurry before the winds pick up at noon
Just as winter's field is plowed
In it's bleakest fertile mounds
Awaits new growth and Meadowlark
Hurry before the newness starts
Blink and you'll refresh
Your eyes will effervesce.
-Kelly Voelker
Poetry is a fine substitute for scripture in any ceremony, especially funerals. The juice has been wrung out of scripture and I crave juicier reflections of human experience as it relates to the profound and mundane.
Kelly Voelker
Without beauty I created comfort
Without beauty I created duty
Without beauty I suffered loss
Without beauty I couldn’t cross
From loss to grief to moving on
I could not grieve but stalled at stoic
I felt the sadness but was heroic
Facilitating links of change and tasks
Why can’t I grieve? I asked
Then one day with nothing to do
I created beauty
Then one day with nothing to hear
I listened to enduring music
Too beautiful to accuse it
Of making me sad
It took beauty to release me glad
Through grief pure and hot
Wondering why some beauty is not
Enduring yet others continue
Before and past beginnings and endings
It matters not what we’ve been through
Beauty endures and soothes the senses
Through the borders, lines and fences.
-Kelly Voelker
Even in our sorrow
Can we not see
Past our imaginations
How a soul refreshed
Could now be gifted
Such a renewal beyond the minds eye
Beyond roles or identity
Still observing as one's true self
The clearest majesty of creation once more held?
-Kelly Voelker
