March 27

“Him”

 

HIM

 

Her assigned deity has been conveyed

She only felt selfish when she prayed

Shunning God’s house and feeling unwelcome fed her dismay

Declining to trumpet what the church parlayed

 

Closer to God under a cathedral of trees

Understanding His purpose in the flowers and bees

Afraid to declare this sort of worship meets His needs

Left doubting herself, her faith and the dogma the church heeds

 

Fed lies and opinions from well meaning clergy

Given pat answers from sheep quoting liturgy

All this only compounds her misery

And leaves her to cognitive dissonance and fearing purgatory

 

Feeling her plight to be personal

Desperately vying for the infernal

Onslaught of demons inevitable

As they try to undermine the weakened vestibule

 

Stories of personal enlightenment are shared

She feels anger and jealousy when her lacking is bared

The invective she spews cannot be compared

But she wouldn’t deny Him if she dared

 

So is she to be spared?

Do heaven and angels care?

Is her Trudie still there?

Or is she trapped in a devil’s snare?

 

She hears the calm voice, still a Southern drawl

The voice declares even the devil believes in God

She wraps angel’s wings about her like a shawl

But you must reckon with him, the voice will still prod

 

So she salvaged her courage and reached out once more

Found herself curled on the floor

After reading a sermon like never before

Written by a mere mortal who could show evidence of his own sores

 

A new way of going

The roads are better banked

She feels sated and suddenly growing

As she sets off on a journey, her direction now flanked

 

For it was only in her own mind, this closing off from God

He was there all along, hanging on through the throng

Watching her struggle to belong

Letting his angels sing their beautiful songs

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater                  9.5.11

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March 27

Out of Sorts

I feel out of sorts ~Charlotte Greer Slater  7.5.11

‘I feel out of sorts’

What a polite little phrase

For the unrest I feel at every port

For my loss at any phase

 

Acutely painful is this state of being

Brought forth from who knows where

As if there is a futility in the exercise of seeing

And I must ardently hold back the despair

 

For this state there is no solution

Only riding out the storm on the horizon

I would squelch it of my own volition

I would do it first for my children

 

I fear my own depths

I have met the deepest fathom before

It’s as if I cannot cease taking the steps

Down Escher’s staircase to see a little more

 

The biggest fear is being detected

Feeling like I have failed the ones I love

For I try to keep them protected

From depression’s ugly shove

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March 27

Hiding Out

HIDING OUT Charlotte Greer Slater 7.11

Hiding out in my garden again today

Letting the flowers and bees fuel my creative juices

Attempting to divine what they are trying to convey

Clinging to feelings this environment induces

 

Do I pick up pencil and sketch?

Address the keyboard to log my thoughts?

Feelings purging and outstretched

urgent questions of how to parlay my mental snapshots

 

My world is filled with rocks, fossils and bones

Warm fuzzy animals vying for a lap to retain

For these things I feel I have nothing to atone

No apologies necessary for my life arcane

 

In other circles I feel the need to explain my eccentricities 

I often use the old refrain

I come by it honestly, it’s a family disease

But luckily, friends usually chime in and explain

 

I look around, pseudo-master of my domain

With a spirit I am unable to contain

Others look on as if I am the peaceable insane.  

Or the eccentric, one in the same.

 

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March 27

Hair A Mess

Hair a mess.

Me, wear a dress?

I must confess,

Only under great duress.

 

But I have no need for posh frocks,

My breeches and boots fit just fine.

You might say I’m unorthodox

But dress-up just isn’t my shrine

 

Why don’t you put on a little makeup?

You could borrow something of mine

“Nah”, as I run for my truck

“But she cleans up so nice” mother opines

 

Friends would die of shock

If I were to don more than mascara

Never on a daily basis around the clock

Making its debut only the rarer

 

So let me be

And be pleasantly surprised

When on occasion my debutante ways are remembered

And  you will eventually become desensitized

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater

July 18th 2011

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March 25

Damp Rises

Damp Rises

 

Damp rises

Flagstones chill under my feet

Rheumatic aches for prizes

Making me crave the heat

 

Trees stand in the damp looking neglected

Wind demands bare arms to creak

Yet under them I feel protected

Reassuring me it is safe to speak

 

The ground drinks

Gaping maw to the full

Gullies at the brink

Gravity their pull

 

The earth submits to the cleansing 

A brutal cold scrubbing

But the trees remain unbending

For the rain is their loving

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater     1.11

 

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March 25

Clover

I have been thinking for awhile

About churchyards full of clover

And the man who comes to mow it

Every Thursday afternoon

 

He knows that once he’s done it

He’ll only do it over

For the clover will just bloom again

Inevitable process and no slow grower

 

But the clover pays no mind

It only reads its lines

That’s all it knows to do

For nature gave it a script to follow through

 

Clover only knows to flower

No matter what besets it

In the valiant hope it’s easy

For wandering bees to detect it

 

We too, should be like clover

Everyone should learn to flower

No matter what besets us

Disregarding the hour

For the sun just keeps on shining

 

And the man just keeps on mowing

And the clover just keeps on growing

In the same old-fashioned way.

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater

7.3.11

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March 25

Blue Sky

Blue sky, when are you going to learn to rain?

And let yourself go grey, release all of that pain

Sometimes, when all the light has left the day,

Blue skies have again failed me, much to my dismay

 

I tell the sky I would join her

If she only would give up the rain

We both could rinse away our pain

And nothing would be in vain

 

So hurry heat, rise away

Feed the clouds at the end of day

Build a thunderstorm without delay

Deliver thunder and lightning like a valet

 

But letting go is not our forte

Blue sky and I don’t always agree

So my urges I endeavor to disobey

And I patiently wait for it to rise another degree

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater    8.17.2011

 

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March 25

Bedtime

Bedtime

 

The light is fading 

Time for growing bodies to slumber

I sing them old lullabies after bathing

Then kiss rosy cheeks, watching consciousness glimmer

 

When they lay down their golden heads,

I can’t help but linger, 

Reading the excitement of sleep on their dormant little faces

Breathing stertorous, nothing but a murmur

 

Enter the sleep monitors without delay.

A cat and a corgi to send them on their way

Peaceful dreams furry warm bodies do convey

A comfort only they can parlay

 

Swiftly, their lithe little bodies take over

Pulling them deeper into much needed sleep

I tell God how I love my little kinder

As I pray for their little souls to keep

 

~Charlotte Greer Slater 7.7.11

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March 25

Whiteness I

The world glows white outside..the snow generously giving the moon back its azure light.  The trees stand like sentinels, shoulders hunched wearing epaulets of ice. The sound of cold, like a breathy echo, absorbing all the audible details.  As the world shivers under its innocuous looking burden, all the living things hunker down, the itinerant and homeless suffering under their lack of defense against the whiteness.

 

I sit here, in this cold.  Just when it seems I am resigned to doing research, seeking technical terms to describe the nuances of behavior, words become too much, and I come sit in the all encompassing argent.  My head is filled with strategic transverse areas, all comprised by several forms of energy my islets can no longer suffer. When my governance of such thoughts becomes too much, I let concentration glide away beyond understanding of the scientific.. and slip into one of the comfortable anterooms of my mind.  The transition is so effortless, so freeing, I lose myself in the dark corners..

 

As my breath clouds and accumulates in my face on this night of supreme whiteness..this night of silvery blue magic, I imagine imps in the wood, puck of the dusk lurking behind trees, watching me with suspicion.  For this is their night, a night filled with all that is ethereal, all that is magic. As the trees creak and groan with ice and are forced to bow to the wind, as the wee owl takes his perch in the highest tree, I escape the surface with him.. My mind carries me over the frozen wood, over the glowing blue fields.  I find myself far away, but yet some place familiar.. Now I am in a friends wood, alight on the big branch outside her door. I sing to her as the wee owl would.. I tell her of the lovely magical night, of all its promise.. I beckon her forth into the glowing azure and argent. I want her to share in my foray into the whiteness unending…and because she is my friend, a touchstone, she abides.  She is the loveliest barn owl, she owns the night. And we set off together, like the puck of the dusk, in the cold wood. Her wings broad and silent, her call plaintive, we listen to all that is left unsaid as we fly. Soon light will come, and our adventure will cease to be, until another magical night presents itself to us.. Until it is time once again for our spirits to fly.

 

Until next time my beautiful creature…

 

Charlotte von Wolfle Greer

2.14.14

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