Changing Past View Edition - 4/27/2000
Welcome to this edition of the poetry ring. The countdown is on for moving day - the end of May. Just small details to be worked out now and a lot of road travel yet. I pass by Franklin and through Nashville every time I make a trip to Indiana, the state soon to become my new home. I was born in Nashville and grew up around Franklin (just south of it). When I hit Nashville, I've always considered myself as coming home even though I haven't lived in Nashville in almost 2 decades and haven't lived around Franklin in the last 13 years. Still it's strange when I go to visit my Mom in Franklin. I grew up with Mom working in Franklin and spending a lot of time there yet when I visited her recently I got turned around just off the square. Though I consider it a "home" place, I am no longer familiar with it. I am a stranger there now and easily lost.
HOMELAND
-Leslie Johnson copyright 2000
Traveling steps
I've walked before
Now only strangers' faces
surround me
strangers walk the grounds
I knew as a child
never knowing
anything about me
never knowing
what I was brought through here
rain drizzles down
hiding my tears
I am now a stranger
in my homeland
an alien in my
birthplace
I can look past
past pains
and catch the beauty
always here
making this place
over anew
just as I have been
knowing my homeland
is now unearthly
I made a decision when I left Franklin last to no longer consider it "home." I have moved so much and even as a child I was not accepted by people in these places I called home. My home is in Heaven with God. Some day I'll get there and feel at ease; my soul repaired by God and full of love from His presence.
Visiting Mom lately has brought on it's own revelations. We sat there talking about the different Bible studies we're doing, family, and recent changes in our lives. You have to know that I love my Mom. We have come through so much and there was a time that I felt a potent mixture of both love and anger for her over the things that occurred in my childhood - in the childhood of all my sisters. But I don't feel that anger anymore. I see my mother as a woman who was just as much a victim as I was. A woman who was afraid to see the horror in her own home. A mortal woman who made mortal mistakes and continues to pay for them. I am sitting at my Mom's kitchen table thinking all these things, loving her so deeply, and yet finding myself as incapable of speaking it as she does in speaking the things that I can see in her eyes and feel in her heart. So often though, it's like this not only with my Mom but with my sisters as well. So I'll say it here as publicly as I can get - because I want them to know how much I love them.
SAYING THE UNSPOKEN
-Leslie Johnson copyright 2000
I can see you trying to say it
"Forgive me for past wrongs."
I can hear unspoken words
"I really wanted to be strong."
I can feel your love flowing
just happy for me to be near
I feel your unvoiced wishes
though you can't make them clear
I can see you trying to make
life new and clean
I can almost forget our past
thinking it only a bad dream
I am guilty as well
of too many unspoken things
I love you, I forgive you, wish to hold you
are thing I want to scream
I want to say
"Forgive me, I too have done wrong."
I want to release my failings
"I only wanted to be strong."
We don't say these things
a gentle quietness between
a simple understanding
letting love flow unseen
I want to say it now
let you know the truth
you are deep in my heart of love
let these words be my proof
As you can see, I've been doing some heavy thinking while driving my car. As I've walked along roads that I walked I was a child, I have come to remember dreams that I once dreamed. I recently enjoyed watching the most recent movie version of Shakespeare's "A Mid-Summer Night's Dream." I enjoyed it so much. When I was younger I enjoyed plays so much. In college I attended every kind of production put on in the campus theater that I could. I was thinking about how I never get out much anymore, let alone to see theater productions. It was then that I remembered dreams of getting out of the life I was in as a child. We didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up. That's a polite way of saying that we were basically poor. I used to love watching those old black and white movies and wishing that I were there. I would devour books and pretend that I was one of the characters. I had wished as a child to place myself in a world surrounded by loveliness. I dreamed a very different life than the one I have now.
FAERY FLIGHTS
- Leslie Johnson copyright 2000
I walk as though
within a dream
through an arbor
dark with green
led as though
by faery wings
to remember things
that have never been
of nights at operas,
and Shakespeare's plays
of orchestras -
the masters' praise
of travel around
this blue green globe
of wandering
down ancient roads
of whispered delights
woven in ruins
creativity brought
to fruition
of classics digested
in heart of a night
lost in visions
of fancy's flight
of cherishing
man's masterpieces
hands and souls
blessed by God's kisses
of silk and satin
velvet and tassels
of a life of opulence
in marbled castles
of simple elegance
in a garden path
of feeling love
in springtime's laugh
The arbor faded
as I turned around
memories lost of
the orchestra's sound
I feel lost
without faery wings
remembering these things
that have never been
Life isn't always how we dream it will be. Things come along scattering dreams like leaves. Old dreams are replaced with new ones. As we get older, the dreams become mainly more practical with a few flights of fancy here and there for balance. Somehow, though, I'm just left feeling mournful for a time of "innocence" when these dreams seemed more real to me. My dreams now are less opulent than those of my childhood. I want to be published someday. Maybe do a little sight seeing type travel. Most importantly, I want to be able to create unfettered whatever God sends into my imagination in whatever medium He chooses to invoke. And perhaps these things aren't just wishes on faery wings. : )
I hope that you've enjoyed this edition of the ring. As of this poetry ring I have shared 63 poems with you since November!
God be with you! Peace, love, and forgiveness.
Leslie Elain
Email: shaken@angelfire.com