Like a secret garden revealed while searching beneath overgrowth Like a song hummed under dialogue in a yet unscripted movie,. Like a heart’s whisper in the silence of an empty room behind an unlocked door.
Liminal Time Is . . .
Author: joanvinallcox
Joan Vinall-Cox, Ph.D. is a lifelong learner, retired communications professor, and rabid reader who has taught in both the college and university systems.
Her Ph.D., in 2004 was an Autoethnographic Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry focused on moving from technophobia to technophilia.
She is a widow from a pretty happy marriage and a mother to a strong and kind daughter.
Her interests include Centering Prayer, Multiple Intelligences, Attention Deficit Disorder and its connection to creativity, Jung, Campbell’s Monomyth, and Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry.
Mourning, 4 a.m.
Dawn comes in the soft grey behind the almost-lace black of summer tree branches.
Lament: 20/23/28
Bitter chocolate on the tongue, surrounded by shared choices, I hug our lost times, by myself.
How to Not Waste Time
Sit still. Breathe outside air, gaze at the lake, and listen to it. Visit with friends: Talk about their lives and yours. Gently water plants, Prepare meals and clear up, Water the garden. Be present. Sit.
Old Age – Summer Solstice
The longest day of the year;: now it gets darker slowly, as light fades.
Beauty’s Pleasures
June lushly blossoms forth trailing sweet smells along my path. The lake ripples above now sun-revealed rocks Beside my path. To accept beauty’s pleasures despite pain and ugliness honours my path.
Mapping the Wilderness
An old post re-posted:
To sample a poem from my 2013 published collection – available from http://www.blurb.com/b/4591664-mapping-the-wilderness – listen to me reading –
Approaching Sixty, I See That … https://on.soundcloud.com/MaBmfFGFs7JgGggn8https://on.soundcloud.com/MaBmfFGFs7JgGggn8 – Hope you find it meaningful, and perhaps buy a copy of my collection.
Courage at eighty is different from at twenty
But both ages carry their future constantly –
A fearsome thrust into an unmapped wilderness.
To carry your future at twenty is to seek
The wilderness because it must be mapped
And shaped. There are roads to clear and homes
To build, and no one has given you a plan
For your wilderness, (just the one they didn’t use in theirs).
So you thrust forward, knowing too little and enough,
Building blindly wherever you find a clearing, lifting
The log of your childhood so it bridges your fears,
Confident that it might not collapse on you.
A fearsome thrust carrying life forward blindly
At eighty requires enough love to endure
Despite loss, and endure because of loss to come,
And endure because of the sweetness still here, if
Courage persists. And, despite (because?) the compass pointing
Through the wilderness to the edge of the map,
Tells a tale seen over and over about endings, despite this,
To work through today knowing
too much, and not enough, about tomorrow.
Courage at eighty is different from at twenty
But both ages carry their future constantly –
A fearsome thrust into an unmapped wilderness.
Difficulties
My contradictions engulf
my secret spaces
sliding me spiral-wise into
darkness.
Sunlit hiddenness.
Forced growth.
Splintered stems.
Exposed roots.
Is there any time
beyond waiting?
Can composted years
be infertile?
Learning Pause and Patience
Life’s hard trips,
(battered knees from speeding,
and missed loves
from masked blindnesses,)
suggest I slow down,
and open my curtains.
Hard to learn
new rhythms
and how to speak
from nightsight.
Life’s strange trajectory
offers wonders and tragedies,
grace moments and opportunities,
and asks me
if I have time
to stay alive.
Dawn
Curtains open, a band of rosy yellow bleeds upwards behind dark firs into a pale sky: another day of grace. My mottled, age-altering skin and sinews carry my history, ride under my costumes and in my gestures - displaying old stories. My feet carry me along the earth, my home, while my hands and heart still seek.
Learning Living 