A sleepless night spent at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere as we traversed across the prairies…..

Saskatchewan 

Prairie guardians, flightless steel

Landscape stretches surreal

Cries of hunter’s, captives caged

Time falls upon the strange

Scent of yellow fields fill

Vastness stretches until

We are lost, we are found

Wheels turn, road stretches on.

Another offering from “Dark Road”, my 1st collection of poetry.  Here’s to detours, being lost, discoveries and trusting your own voice wherever the journey and the pen leads.

Ordinary

Waiting for the ordinary

on a Tuesday in May, barely

warm enough for the cotton dress

blue striped, clings to her swelling breasts;

the world passes aquamarine eyes

and in that moment, she decides

stirs her tea, sips in contentment

perfume of lilacs is sweetest

as you turn from Oak onto Main

every breath is never the same.

Welcome to Monday Morning Musings – I thought I would start with a poem I shared at a Poetry Fest once upon a time and a photo from a recent Saturday morning walk.

Perils & Pearls

I cannot ask what I cannot give
I will not excuse the truth I live
Complications of my creation
Spirit’s quandary, my destination
Spectrum of gray shades actions, choices
I am one of the nameless voices
Who stands to fall in the name of this
Perils and pearls for those who dare risk.

My 1st collection of poetry titled “Dark Road” is now available on Amazon and through other online distributors.

Poetry has offered me solace, momentary respite, wondrous delight, stars in my darkness and a passion for the rhythms and moods of words.  Afternoons dreaming at Walden’s Pond, adrift with The Lady of Shalott to Camelot, odes on Grecian urns and tenement walls, Will’s sonnets, whimsical Seuss & Carrol’s Jabberwocky, Eliot’s felines and Sylvia’s sorrows were my beloved companions.

Coil notebooks filled with scribbled lines of teenage angst, foolish love, and two a.m. doubts in faded blue ink.  Words an avenue to acknowledge myself and my feelings when most often I felt invisible. Poetry helped this too world wise child find her voice. It has continued to be a means to have my say even when no one is listening or seems to care. I still have my perspective albeit right, misguided or somewhere in between.

Perhaps there are others in the world who seek a moment to pause and muse over a few lines before the demands of the world force them back into the crashing waves of life.

Monday Morning Musings kicks off on June 3. I will post a poem from “Dark Road” weekly over the next few months. Here’s to detours, being lost, discoveries and trusting your own voice wherever the journey and the pen leads.

Peace

Laura

As I prepare to release Dark Road, my first collection of poems I have been reminiscing about how poetry came into my life.

The library was a refuge for the misfit, cross eyed, single parent kid attending Catholic school. Books were my friends and offered opportunities for great adventures and fun.  They didn’t tease or judge me and offered escape and solace from a misunderstood world. There was a worn and weighty sky blue hued bound book filled with poems.  I  would get lost in its pages for hours curiously comforted by the rhythms and moods that were found within.

I saw my first Shakespearean play when I was nine and fell in love with the musicality of the words and the theatre. Dear Uncle Llew with his lilting Welsh accent recited snippets of Keats, Shelly, & Dickinson to me and whoever was within earshot.  My mother had an amazing record collection and I listened to opera, Frank Sinatra, Kris Kristofferson,  and a.m. pop radio.  Words falling onto my ears and into my heart.

On the shelf is a collection of love poems from a sweet ex lover that I have held onto for over two decades despite letting him go. Cohen, Plath, Walden,  Jim Carroll,  Will and his sonnets,  Susan McMaster,  Rumi,  Dr. Seuss and Jewel are fragments of  my poetic journey.

Poems are bite sized morsels in a too busy world. They allow us to pause, to feel, to wonder. They are mysteries to unravel, breaths of  crisp air,  sweet promises, youth’s outrage and  two a.m. heartbreak. They are our moments captured.

Peace

Laura

A year ago with the support of friends and fans, we realized our Kickstarter goal for “The Remenbering Wall.” There were still a few production hiccups and layout challenges, but we delivered the books to everyone who had pre-ordered by February when I flew to Mexico to make an extra special delivery to my Baja family.

The past year has seen me visit 15 schools and youth groups in Edmonton, Medicine Hat and Loreto, BCS Mexico. The Remembering Wall has found a home on bookshelves, and in schools and libraries around the globe including Italy, Sweden, Mexico, Bali, England, Croatia, France, the United States, and from coast to coast in Canada. To all of my travelling friends I am happy to give you a paperback copy to deliver to a library or school on your next adventure so get in touch.

“The Remembering Wall” starts conversations about diversity, connections, and community. Children are wise and know that even though we have many differences we are all part of the human race. We each have a story, hearts and feelings. Treating others with kindness and respect makes our world a nicer place.

Thank you for being part of this journey. I’m working on a book of poetry and planning for another children’s book in 2018.

Peace & Happiness

Laura