Unmaintained Road

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

A Glimpse of Wonder

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

Realizing the Nexus

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

Along Fences to Woods

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

As if it were Mine

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

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

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

Eyes Will Effervesce

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

A Fine Substitute

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

Beauty Endures

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

 

The Clearest Majesty

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

Sense of Loss

 At last, I've put a finger

Firmly on a strange feeling

Before now I couldn't identify

When one sees pictures of hieroglyphs

Or tours a grand home from the previous century

Or as now when I carefully sift through

What is left of my parent's long life together.

Or when I see where a railroad track was removed

Or a one room schoolhouse standing in ruin. 

What is this feeling so sad and so dear

It is the profound 'sense of loss.'

I feel we are losing the ability to be simple and free

I feel we are losing our basic survival instincts

To a mountain of plastic nothingness.

Our virtues are tied to commercial holidays

Our emotions milked with well designed ploys

We rely on calculators as we rely on this nothingness

To chart our lives as emptiness drives so many

Out of their minds.

No stability thrives, as security hides 

From the amplified chaos the nothingness breeds

Can one construct from what's left

A life to preserve and use what others would refuse

In solitary satisfaction that these were correct actions

Are these surviving objects futile or essential clues?

-Kelly Voelker