Endeavor's Trail

We do not grow into templates
Or soar by flight plan
We do not live to fulfill
What others envision
Or even master what
Towards we are driven
Instead our lives build upon
Complicated networks
Time and motivation pawned
For stable stature and a lawn
To what end endeavor's trail
Enjoyment, freedom may derail
More a term, agree, consent
Roles reverse then boundaries set
Perspectives none are cut and dried
Sediment of content rich
Settles after current slows
Looked upon as sky at dusk
A wonder after toil and trust.

-Kelly Voelker

The Vacuum of Doubt

Doubt is a shift
From belief to fulcrum
Powerful or weak
Inviting new information
Thought which will seek

Doubt as a default
Weakens the will
Of others and self
Dampening virtue
Actions then shelved

Doubt as a vacuum
Leaves room for unseen
Forces of benevolence
Scorn or misdeed

Fill your doubts
With better not worse
Empower as someone
With truths to unearth.

-Kelly Voelker

Our Consciousness Withstands

Will the speed of our tomorrow
Allow for the humanity of today?
Will the lapse now in our schedule
Breathe life back in our day?
Will mechanized influences
Damage who we are?
Will the lessor of emotions become
Time consuming waste?
Leaving productivity and
Pressure to make haste.
Recognize advantages
We still have close at hand
Which will keep us human
So our consciousness withstands.

Kelly Voelker

New Moon, Darkens the Circle

By filling in the circle dark
The universe has voted on
This day in particular to
Empty the trash that stands perpendicular
And across your intention, purpose and splendor

The new moon cannot even show you its face
As the negative images, regret and sorrow
Try to stand in as what matters tomorrow

The nagging voice inside of your head
Reminding you twice what should've been done instead
No matter what you decided the odds are in favor
This voice disagrees and will tell you repeatedly
During the darkness and in between leisurely

So natural and confident this voice remains
Yet know this for sure
Nothing is contained in the image or concept
That you could do better

The voice that encourages
Feels like a soft sweater
Comforting you as you have deserved
The wisdom of ages is gentle, assured.

- Kelly Voelker

Character Legacy

Take care to amend
Any notions taken in
As part of your status quo

If your character has had
A mechanical failure due to
Not being engineered well

Fix it in time
To carry out your will
Even after your eventual demise.

-Kelly Voelker

You Could

Could you reassure
Calm and restore

Could you expect more
A higher bar of ethics
Becoming kinetics

Steering change
Without the havoc
Allowing leeway
To drift inline
A safer, milder, gentler kind

Could you wish it
With an open mind
To enter easily just in time

Could you know a harmony as told
Influencing others to unfold
From clenched expectations old

Perhaps this is not a question
But rather, open ended suggestion.

-Kelly Voelker

What is Humble?

Humble, as an attribute,
Stands quietly in the distance
As a familiar mountain range
Or the shape of a known landmark
Slightly ahead of
And bowing aside
As others pass it steeped in pride.

Its balanced buoyancy
Keeps it calm
Acquired over time
A ballast of prime proofs
A chalice of found truths
Authentically derived
Offered without words
For all to drink from
If they would ask.

This sequence is key
To knowing the purity
Of the bare plain safety
Of the humble soul
As a lone tree offering
Shelter from competition
Peace from the heckling public
Rest for the weary newcomer
Who walks the Earth blind.

-Kelly Voelker

Hence

As photos dissolve into digital images
Organized on a man-made information cloud
As books become hence, transferred from
author to reader by invisible means
As paintings become digital photographs
enhanced by the light of computer screens
As consciousness sees the world through
technological portals
The memories, the expressions, once
assisted by plants via paper and canvas
Can be owned by us and our own creations
The warehousing and curating of material
Expressions will dissolve, and resources
Freed back to their own natural realms
after ages of division in purpose
We had no other way
The lighter and freer sharing of thought
Beauty and memories automatically
Organized better than before
Disappearing forever once witnessed and born.

-Kelly Voelker

Hence -
1.  as a consequence; for this reason.

2.

in the future (used after a period of time).

Time Erases Significance

Time erases the significance of everything.  

Current significance exists 

Because of inherited attachments.  

Create something beautiful.

Beauty is the only valid legacy. 

-Kelly Voelker

Home Base of Gratitude

My name is Gratitude
Don't act like you don't know
Don't pretend I don't exist here
Or there or with all unknowns
I see things with a softer
Open relaxed breathe
I'm open honest grounded
The opposite of vexed*

You struggle with such effort
You think through all amends
You wonder what you'll do next
You worry, fret, pretend
This is not a war game
Or a complicated test

If you could see through my eyes
You'd see you're in your nest.
You're cared for, valued, healthy
The opposite of hexed

Now a part of binary
Spinning with no effort
You are the perfect combination
Of Earth and fine Ideals

You've awakened from your dream, dear
I'm the pillow under your head
I offer peace and free you
I'm the grateful state of home base
I'm the grateful state, I SEE you.

-Kelly Voelker

* vexed - 1. (of a problem or issue) difficult and much debated; problematic.

2.

annoyed, frustrated, or worried

Lifespan of the River

Lifetimes are like rivers
Meandering through time
Some seem never ending
Others end entwined
Giving all their life force
To another stream
Who will carry
What it can as far as
Where we cannot dream

The ultimate destination
Is the source or larger plan
We have never been there
Until our sudden end

The deltas are these places
Calm and not as fast
Whether reached in old age
If we haven't diminished
Or run out of our banks
Dispersing all we held as
Silt and sand and slough*

Life is a collection of
What we travel through
What we're still attached to
Sinks before we're done
Servicing another
Or becoming part of mud.

-Kelly Voelker

Slough -

1. 1.

   a swamp.

   • NORTH AMERICAN

     a side channel or inlet, or a natural channel that is only sporadically filled with water.
2. 2.

   a situation characterized by lack of progress or activity.

Delta - "When a river reaches a lake or the sea the water slows down and loses the power to carry sediment . The sediment is dropped at the mouth of the river. Some rivers drop so much sediment that waves and tides can't carry it all away. It builds up in layers forming a delta."

NOTE:  As I think about this, civilization can be thought of as a delta.  The layers and remains of so many lifetimes of effort and best attempts.  A city or a library can even be thought of as a delta.

Code of Tiny Details

My mind open wide
My eyes scoop up
The vast prairie landscape
Mile after mile
Yielding tiny details
Huge subtle patterns emerge
The local spoonbill scoops
Large amounts of water
On the move
To yield tiny zooplankton
From which to nourish himself
To survive longer than other fish
From what is written
In the code of the tiny details.

-Kelly Voelker

What Do I Sound Like Inside Your Mind?

For those who don't know me
When reading my poems
What do I sound like?
In your mind on your own
You must make up a sound
As you're reading the lines
Fashioning an image of
What someone like me
Would sound like if fluent
And speaking to thee
I never read aloud my own poems
It feels unnecessarily naked
Like my voice cannot own
The sentiments shared here
From an ancient wise soul
Sarcastic about society's
Strongholds and norms
Yet hopelessly loving
Trace sentiments hidden
In mundane experience
Each horse had been ridden
Each path had been trod
A great depth of experience
Eager to respond
A witness and sympathizer
From the mysterious beyond.

-Kelly Voelker

Prayeree (pronounced Prairie)

If prayers were more visual
We couldn't decipher
Unless we saw grassland
Wetlands and heather
A soft sweeping movement
Of Earth's own plant waves
Sending the code off planet to save
The suffering or buried or
Lonely one knows
Peace in the ebbs
Release in the flows.

-Kelly Voelker

The Cross of This Existence

I'm aware of Divine presence
I'm aware of Earthly stance
I know which one I'm into
Sometimes I misstep in this dance

A harmony would be here
If something could only bridge
The nothingness of being between
Poles that do not shift

The orchestra of crickets
In the morning stillness knows
The cicadas and the fireflies
Dusk's bridge to the unknown

They're the lateral perfect balance
To the extremes psychics feel
Between the seen and unseen
Where life went, when and where

Between living and where life went
Is a thin and beautiful veil
Which to the blind is distant
But close when I'm aware

I feel crickets as a cosmic song
As heard here on this Earth
When everything is changing
It ensures I know my worth

The essence of pure consciousness
Is a chirping, ringing song
Sped up past our senses
From dusk and through 'til dawn.

-Kelly Voelker

What Does the Hemlock Know?

What does the lovely hemlock say
Amid mid-summer storms
Prevalent and principled
Exists as if the norm
To be so terribly poisonous
And feared in stories old.

Yet with every summer
In each pasture, roadside fence
The hemlock thrives among
Those side by side, cattle whom
Heads are down to graze
Just browsing 'round they roam.

Now mid-summer suddenly sees
Hemlock dry and brown
Amid a rainy summer
It prepares for early fall.

"What does the hemlock know", I say
"Why is it leaving now?"
A wise and fearsome plant it is
And yet it's gone away.

-Kelly Write Away

Cloud of Dainty Song

In a miniature fury
We ride the wind
Settling on the bare treetops
Like a chiffon veil

We add specks to the tree
With our distant silhouettes
Above the auditory range
Our song breaks through

Heard by only a few
Sensitive ears
Plastic whistles heard
From over the horizon

Distant hollow whistles
Woodwind sounds in
Intermittent harmony
With the bare branches

In reality up close
We are clothed in
A costume so sacred
Both humble and Angelic

Both Earth and Sky
Painted color as delicate
As vintage Japanese teacups
Head accented by feather hat

Eyes hidden by black streak
To protect us from
Any inappropriate gaze
We see only a few sensitive you

We survive existing together
As a cloud of dainty song
Away from your longing
To see us entirely we thrive

Alone we would not sustain
Vibration aloft for
Such a dense place as this
We need each other to remain discreet*

*discreet - intentionally unobtrusive

NOTE FROM AUTHOR:  I was verifying definitions, and realized discrete and discreet mean two different things.  I merely misspelled discreet to discover this.  This in turn made me realize Cedar Waxwings are mostly discreet to us, but on a higher plane are discrete.  To be discrete makes them vulnerable to our lower plane, but to be discreet protects them and their higher physical station in this often brutal world.

**discrete - individually separate and distinct

-Kelly Voelker

My Dreams are Blessings

In my state of Purity
My dreams will become
Blessings for all life on Earth.

-Kelly Voelker

The Flowering of the Mind

The flowering of the body

Is apparent and is seen

Following prognosis

Climbs more quickly when in teens

The flowering of the mind

Is unexpected to achieve

In process then through gnosis

Explodes beyond what one believed

Hidden noted humans

Throughout time have failed the test

Knowing their experience

And behavior was suspect

Don't gauge your own awareness

By others in dispair 

Don't regulate enthusiasm's

Way of exceeding 'self aware'

-Kelly Voelker

prognosis - a forecast of the likely outcome of a situation

gnosis - knowledge of spiritual matters; mystical knowledge.

self aware - good knowledge and judgment about yourself

Virtue

All that remains after
Fire and flood
Testing the framework
Testing my blood

The code is of virtue
I have a strong hold
On what it must feel like
To be valiant and bold

I no longer doubt
What I am made of
I feel the perfection
Of darkness made old

The newest obsession
Is of goodness and deed
Born of complexity
Ego and greed

No one can know virtue
Until one has bloomed
From dirt and adversity
To wholeness now plumed

The newness of virtue
The foundation of strength
The confidence of wisdom
Earned and not faked.

-Kelly Voelker