A Poem a Day (713): Walk

 
Walk
 
They say you can’t walk on water,
so take it slow. Build a raft of faith tied
with hope, bypass this bottomless void,
coral devoid of pearl. Cover your scars
 
with someone else’s feathers while clownfish
sway in anemones’ arms & you lose your charms
in wishing, take the hits as they come,
wait for the ever-circling shifting sands.
 
They say you lose nothing in waiting,
only time, but time is everything.
You get your allocation, can’t expand on it.
 
You lift mountains trying to find the thing,
search out this invisible, ever-travelling light.
Blink & you might miss it pass you by.
 
We pause to see ourselves, count our lessons
on calendars already etched with bloody crosses.
They paint obstacles and you excavate tunnels,
pack your bag of treasured things and move on.
 
Gold isn’t gold; it can’t be bought.
It’s the one thing you know, the one thing
they can’t take away from you.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, March 24, 2025

A Poem a Day (712): Numb

 
Numb
 
In the rain
she feels everything,
hears morning rise,
the ache of the world
in the break of dawn,
feels the switch,
a pause she cannot fill,
a sense of emptiness,
the knowing of being
nothing at all.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, March 24, 2025

A Poem a Day (711): Musical notes

 
Musical notes
 
He can’t live with it
tethered in silence,
always locked inside,
so he wrote a note,
just for her.
 
But she never read it.
 
It travelled between places,
swept up by the west wind,
caressed by strangers’ hands,
misunderstood.
 
She lived her life in flow,
swept up in rhythmic tides,
never heard his story,
never knew what he held inside.
 

He kept his heart quiet.
 
Somewhere, this note,
it still travels,
experiences many lives,
but never encounters love.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, March 24, 2025

A Poem a Day (710): Simply blue

 
Simply blue
 
We stand in line upon the sinking time,
curiosity’s stilted mime, this out-of-focus line,
a make-believe that we can be something more,
people in a bottle in a box outside of time,
tripping colour of a something folded outline.
 
The sea curses no one, crashes out sublime
& we are struck dumb by its stark silence.
 
Mindful are we, who we are, who you are,
of the mind, out of mind, even out of sound,
& we are pained by the squares of the round,
yet what we seek is here, not out of time,
it hasn’t crossed the line, so make it mine.
 
Tour the swift seas wide, your wanderings beguiled,
invisible wand, tempest torn, the unbroken wild,
sensing what can’t be seen, hearing every distant shore,
begat, begot, wanting less simply to become more,
free in your lost time, woken now, endure and done.
 
The ocean hears what the ocean wants & needs,
feels what it is, puzzles it out, churns it all inside,
& we are but ghosts watching as dark waters reside,
our audience calm, a woven quilt, all linked beside,
the breadth of us suspended within our sacred breath.
 
Vickie Johnstone, February 12, 2025

A Poem a Day (709): The dip in the book

The dip in the book
 
She colours outside the edges
where ink gathers to explode
the traces of places been & faces seen,
to reinvent every missing moment.
 
She strikes all the right notes,
gets the time right to offer a smile,
offers advice when it isn’t even needed,
struggles to keep her own counsel.
 
She magicks night awake sometimes,
takes flight upon starlight’s ocean streams,
a-wandering in and out of time,
seeks to reorder the crazy things she’s seen.
 
She rewrites every story she’s ever read,
so no implosions, only happy endings.
Meaning lies in the waking hour,
but it’s groundless when she forgets to dream.
 
Vickie Johnstone, February 12, 2025

A Poem a Day (708): Pilgrims

 
Pilgrims
 
Stranger in a stranger land,
shapeless forms on shifting sands,
 
the awake and ever-searching self,
a walk without an end in sight.
 
We leave our bags at the airport,
abandon our shoes in the ocean,
 
fly a kite only to see where it takes us,
pursue our wanderings into tomorrow.
 
We set sail and hope never to return,
wish away our whole life on a maybe,
 
rock the times just to stay true to our souls,
dig deep inside to find the thing to live for.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, February 2, 2025

A Poem a Day (707): Flames

 
Flames
 
In air,
as in water,
unwritten. Unsaid.
Fire curls the edges of wrath,
flames without a phoenix.
 
Turrets scurry in mist,
a drawbridge with no end.
This path divides and redivides
into a soar of mountains.
And then it’s gone.
 
It’s not a game. It never was.
Aces high, delusion low.
Fire breathes a lion’s soul.
 
Seeds of a dandelion travel far,
blown on languorous breeze,
for there is movement.

Otherwise, all is stasis,
all is illusion. Just coal.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, February 2, 2025

A Poem a Day (706): Moths

 
Moths
 
In the cocoon,
lair of the moth,
quiet watches the moon rise,
the shift in the cosmos,
a shaking of time.
 
Fireworks explode
this eaten-out horizon,
a drifting sand expanse untrod.
We are but blighted stars,
torn strips of gravity.
 
In the cocoon,
he watches the spaces
betwixt knowing and exempt,
as though all the light is cried out
and the ocean churns to drown.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, February 1, 2025

A Poem a Day (705): Journeying

 
Journeying
 
From rock to blade of grass
to bark to stone to living water,
this glistening, a rapture to spring,
an endeavour to be more, not less,
to flower, aspire, to be.
 
Soundless, the tallest tree bends
to air, speaks a language only
the river knows, and our feet sink
into mossy roots, a juncture read,
seek to walk the breath of nature.
 
We glimpse our own raw nakedness
without the weight of ourselves,
to travel light in pursuit of this missing part.
We measure each footprint we make
lest we leave too deep a mark.
 
In coming here we aspire to soar as birds,
unbridled, leaves shielding us from glare.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, February 1, 2025
 

A Poem a Day (704): The machine

 
The machine
 
A broken thread,
it cannot be gathered
or rejoined, extinguished
sound. The pathway, once clear,
eats noise, the teeth of the machine,
a Singer with no tune.
 
Life waits at the edges of
shunted cloth, pushed forth at pace.
But the link is gone.
 
The hole in the fabric blinks,
a chasm without light. It pulls
and you feel it sometimes. But cloth,
it cannot feel, they say. You can’t feel
what you never had.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, February 1, 2025