"Testing, Testing...One, Two, Three"

 

Hope lies between the lines

of dreams and of unanswered prayer

as we, mere mortals, search to find

peace from pain we've buried there.

               *  *  *  *  *

Believe in the power if you choose

that parts the seas and turns the tides

Could such entreaty be refused;

a whispered word of urgency

from the place where love resides?

 

When all else fails we’re left to conjure

hope beyond all hope to cure

the ills from which there’s no returning;

I watched you fade into thin air...

you wonder why faith disappears?

 

How many prayers have you seen answered?

How many hearts are left to bear

the pain of loss despite “believing”

that there’s a God that truly cares

while undeserving loved ones leave us

    lost in our unanswered prayer.

                  *  *  *  *  *

“No” has always been the answer,

reprieve short lived; the end’s the same.

We look to pin the fault on someone,

but really there’s no one to blame.

Miracles are not forthcoming

we bear our loss as best we can

our questions gather dust, unanswered

derived from pitting God to man.

© Ginny Brannan 2024

Image: Photographer C. Parant, Appetite for Photos. Used with espressed written permission.

The Price We Pay

 

‘Pinch me,’ I cried, ‘awake me from this dream

 I’m stuck somewhere between

  the place of love and loss.”

My losses have been many,

  too well I know the cost. 

 

Alas, I do not sleep,

too many hearts I keep...

  love is never cheap

 

 

Joining De Jackson at D’Verse Poets Pub today for Quadrille #193. 
A Quadrille is a small succinct poem of exactly 44 words. It may rhyme...or not. Today's Quadrille is to be written to include the word "pinch" in one of it's many forms.

Forsaken

She met him on the path that led

up past the iron gate,

wrapped up in her winter cloak

could barely see her face.

He’d spoken of the future, 

and all the things he’d do

And promised that when he was set,

he’d come back for her, too,

The road to hell is paved 

with intentions that are good,

filled with ‘what ifs’, and some ‘maybes’
but not always with “coulds”

They could  have gone together

instead he went alone,

she waved  at him and smiled, 

he nodded and was gone.

But that smile was the last smile

to come upon her face

not knowing that the hug they shared, 

would be their last embrace.

Sometimes way leads on to way, never to return;

time is a not a given,  love’s lessons are hard learned.

So hold on tight to what you have

don’t leave to chance or fate.

trust your instincts don’t give in

tomorrow may be too late.

 

© Ginny Brannan 2024

Image credit: Joanne Davis, Bellows Falls, VT. Used with expressed written permission. 

 

*Prompted Poetry from D’Verse Prosery, January 15^th, 2024: to use the specific line, written here in “boldface” in a poem or story. Confessing that I saw the lovely image first, and wrote this piece around it. The boldfaced line comes from a poem by Dudley Randall called "Ballad of Birmingham" written in 1963 quite ahead of the death of Martin Luther King, about the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.

 Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." MLK Jr.

************************************************

OOPS! Apparently Prosery is more short story than a poem, of 144 words. I am not a short story person, although a poem can tell a story. And I blew it with 160 words! Guess I'll stick to what I am good at!

A Work In Progress

 

Like a puzzle, we put together the pieces—

framing our thoughts, studying the board

deciding what fits where, arranging,

re-arranging until the picture we’ve created

makes sense, everything in its rightful place.

Yet sometimes we think it done, only to find

a piece has gone astray. We search high and low

to no avail, only to discover much later 

that the piece was not gone, but hiding in plain sight

waiting to be found, to become part of the whole.

Sometimes we stare too long, trying to discern,

even trying to make things fit where they do not belong.

Some things cannot be rushed, they unfold

as they should, in their own time, not in ours. 

And as the puzzle unfolds, we discover correlations

with our own life: words, lines, actions, emotions—

all are small parts of a very large picture. 

And sometimes we must step back to see 

the beauty of what we have created.

 

© Ginny Brannan 2024

Like a Strand in the Wind

 

“And the days go by, like a strand in the wind

   In the web that is my own, I begin again”

                                     – Stevie Nicks

 

I lost myself to the grayness of days,

my light hidden inside the recesses of a broken heart.

The nights passed slowly, one to another

rare moments of peace were swallowed 

by the endless hours in the half-light.

They say that “time heals,” yet it does not erase.

We somehow come to live with these changes

wondering if we can ever get back to that place

where the glass was half-full, where hope survives.

 

It was a cold winter’s day when the sun broke through

and I finally felt the heaviness slipping away. 

Healing is a process, and each of us must discover 

our own way out of the darkness,

how to stay afloat, how not surrender to the abyss–

until we finally become the hero of our story:

not unscathed by pain and loss, for

we carry the scars of every battle we have fought

and every person we have ever loved.

Yet, it’s not our losses that define us  

but the ability to continue in spite of them.

For loss is the price we pay for love,

and ultimately, it is that love that carries us 

to the place where we can mend

and come back to the light again.

.

 

© Ginny Brannan 2024

Artwork Maritime Strand, Philip Juras