A Poem a Day (720): Burial in water

 
Burial in water
 
It’s a listening thing,
fake disappearing, halo effect,
a plunge into obscurity,
disintegrating in oceans rapt,
a burial, held aloft to wonder at,
to hold, let fall into dust –
feather-like, stranded stars
crossing the sky like ants.
 
The childlike dance of the mystic
hits you, a rainbow striding,
motions arcing over broken idols
drilled into the shore.
You count the score when you
should plunge, salted, disheveled,
into breath. A starfish shapes itself
in sand, winks its orange skin,
 
and I pick it up, this delicate life,
its radiating heat, rhythmic beat,
guide it through the crystal deep.
The horizon walks a heady line.
It whispers sometimes,
bubbles beneath this jaded sun,
an arc of dripping yolk burning
words of hope into water.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, June 18, 2025

A Poem a Day (718): The circle

 
The circle
 
There is a reason
bereft of season
extinct of leaves
that survives emotion,
a release to savour
beyond endeavour
the world’s compassion
amid pure elation,
to seek to celebrate
outside the obstinate
all the indelicate,
afraid to waken it.

Beneath this starlight
jibes another trick
that licked the night,
the way it burned so bright.

We stand still in time
outside of every rhyme,
every turn in the sky
seeking truth, not lie,
fierce oceans ironing out
beyond any doubt
this desire to speak
when you feel so meek,
a vowel left unsaid,
a need unfed.

So we caress water,
defend with laughter,
stand still, naked,
always so eternally naked.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, June 14, 2025

A Poem a Day (717): Crossing water

 
Crossing water
 
We gaze into the ears of seashells,
listen for the soft surf of water’s flow,
the truth of all our destinations,
a lover waiting in the wings,
this always-in-the-ether maybe.
 
We dance on beaches we once drew,
recite conversations we never wrote,
seek recalled waves from all our yesterdays
and watch the sun set into a sleeping sea.
And somehow we are encouraged
 
to walk on, to swim, crash, rise or fall.
So here we are, not so small after all.
We are the waking and the being,
and the rush of something else
we can never get a handle on,
 
but here we are in our looking glass,
reflected in flittering black obsidian,
wondering who stares back at us,
clerical, whimsical, ephemeral,
and we are reborn without even wishing it.
 
Distance is a subtle turn of the page
or a deep dive through a kaleidoscope
of shiftless shapes we cannot even see
until here we stand at the all too familiar
crossroads, seeing only as far as we are allowed,
 
burrowing against our every restriction,
throwing caution to the delight of our heart.
We are the divided outside of division.
We are the wonder that we ever spent this long
drifting.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, June 14, 2025

A Poem a Day (580): The surging sea

This one was written on Monday and Tuesday, but I didn't get a chance to post it yesterday. 

 

The surging sea
 
It’s something beyond words,
this speaking without saying anything at all,
none of the creations inside your head,
an outer world of living inner space,
this seeing without seeing,
a pull beyond the other world.
 
And here we pause before the rosebud sea,
this sheer wild energy, a surging out
of truth, ideas and pure patience.
Feel lost in the rush of it, the subtle shift,
the stifled air purified with salt,
the knowing without a reason to know.
 
It bends and rides and finds us here,
travels straight through us,
beyond the day and over the night,
and we can bear it, full-on, full force,
for we are with it, in it, of it,
and all the rest is white, white noise.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 8-9, 2023