And I will quietly be
as I am.
Yes, I will quietly be.

And I will quietly be
as I am.
Yes, I will quietly be.
How my soul asks to be held.
How she breathes
the cotton thoughts of yesterday
through the trees
as she remembers.
The birds are home and so am I.
I could say they are noisy, but they are not really noisy. They are only noisy if I think of them in relation to my world.
On their own, they are just who and what they are.
Birds.
Chirping, squawking birds.
I’ve deleted another of my posts (those of you who have been around for a while will know I have done this, from time to time) because the energy of the post didn’t feel like my truth.
It felt like the underside of my world. It felt like the dark parts of me, not my sunshine.
I choose only to shine on this world, when I can help it.
In the post I deleted, I spoke of scammers and manipulation, and where I have felt victimised as a woman in the past. These pains, I know, are real, and they will live within me and walk beside me in everything I do.
But they are not who I am. And the ways I have been victimised are not the people who have hurt me, either.
I see those who have bullied me, taken advantage of me, used or abused me, but I see the pain within them more. They have been small children, hurt by something in life, desperate to cover that pain with a bandaid.
Who am I to blame them when I am the bearer of the very same wounds that scar them?
I will try for the birds, to allow them to be.
The river is always changed
after the stone
has pierced her
still waters.
Energy speaks
truer
than words.
Woman.
Professional woman.
Single professional woman.
Blonde single professional woman.
Old blonde single professional woman.
Sweet old blonde single professional woman.
Joyful sweet old blonde single professional woman.
Australian sweet old blonde single professional woman.
Human.
Man.
Unemployed man.
Married unemployed man.
Blonde married unemployed man.
Middle-aged blonde married unemployed man.
Funny middle-aged blonde married unemployed man.
Sad funny middle-aged blonde married unemployed man.
American sad funny middle-aged blonde married unemployed man.
Human.
I feel the truth
only because of the false.
A seeing
beyond the faces of clowns.
Play rolled in fear,
don’t you see
the squeaky carousel?
They feel the brittle bones
of life gone by
and bleed again,
but only if they see.
No.
They won’t see,
they don’t want to see.
Be anyone but the truth,
they whisper.
Be anyone
but me.
Life is a story I tell myself.
And I daren’t tell it wrong
for fear of the unhappy ending.
But what is unhappy?
And what is an ending
if a beginning is found
on the other side
of each new end?
He bought it in 1946 for six pounds, which apparently was quite the sum back in the day. He’s 92 and wonderful, my darling neighbour, Joe, I’ll call him. The gigantic relic of a dictionary was his. Now it belongs to me.
Joe and I lounged in his well kept living room and sipped champagne to celebrate my family’s one year anniversary of owning our home. He had remembered, not us. We were flawed with gratitude and awe.
As we sat, he told me stories of his life; the pains, the joys, stories of beautiful friends and loved ones here and gone. I could have sat there all afternoon. Instead I settled for an hour and a champagne, and two home-made yoyo biscuits (made by a dear friend of his, and absolutely delicious, might I add.)
The dictionary came up in conversation and I mentioned how I’d planned to buy a special one myself, some day. Brooke, the writer; of course she’d need to invest in something so truly lovely, full of all that writerly goodness. And just like that, the dictionary, the precious illustrated dictionary, had become apart of our family.
I will cherish it for as long as I live. Not because it’s the dictionary I’ve always wanted, but because it will remind me of a beautiful soul that has touched my life deeply.
As I sat with him I told him, ‘Joe. You have such a pure soul,’ and it’s true. I’ve never felt a person quite like him and I wish there were more people in the world who felt as beautiful, to me.
The purest of hearts. The ones that lift us to be our best. The ones we all hope we might be for others.
I plan to go for tea again with him soon, my darling friend, Joe.
I cannot think of how I might repay his kindness.
If light though the trees is your wish,
it is my wish, too.
If a meadow awash with eerie shadow
calls you,
I am gone.
Already beyond the boxwoods
and sweet peas
of my garden, home.
Day 24. Somewhere over the rainbow.