In the 3rd year of my grief
I woke up
to my readjusted self
and conscious mourning.
I had new thoughts
discovering,
recognizing,
other possibilities.
Energies rose
and swirled within me.
I reached out
with questions.
Stumbling Into Sanity
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.
Tangles
Like clothes tangled together
from the dryer
I twist and try to pull apart
confusing feelings.
Easier than clothes tangled
from the washer -
wrapped, locked, together
refusing.
The creature they clothe -
more worn,
more torn,
more tangled.
Trips
Leaf clad branches wave,
black against the grey light
of an approaching
morning.
I am wound with words,
enchained and given wings, both.
Words wound, but no words, (silence),
wound more.
Grey monstrous ghosts lurk
beyond the edges of the map,
while winds blow me
away from my home.
My GPS, set to “No tolls, No highways”,
is failing,
circling me through
detours and closed roads.
I drive through fog,
alert only to the back-up beeping
of warnings
and blockages.
This old sideroad,
formerly a highway,
might be allowing me to approach
a new morning.
Bio
I am a person of metaphors:
trumpeting truth
through indirections,
whispering wishes
into the wind.
Soul Mapping
There rises from deep within me,
before thought, shaping feeling,
choices, sometimes words —
heart and gut desires
Sometimes I listen,
sometimes I hear,
sometimes I close my eyes
and plunge another way.
The crest of a thought
wakes me, warns me,
pulls me back onto the path
and towards the shape of my life.
New Wellsprings
I had allowed my heart
to wither
and dry out
in the absence
of one I loved.
Looking at the lushness
of another summer,
I discovered
different sources
greening me up.
With the swelling and softening
of my heart,
beyond tears, my eyes
Could recognize
new wellsprings of joy.
Twilight
The slow diminishing
of a northern summer day
into a gentle twilight
whispers
that night approaches.
The heat of the day
cools softly
with caressing breezes
offering kindness
as an evening gift.
Before the darkness
shrouds the remaining light,
an easing comfort
can be received
and shared.
In the Memetime
PostEnlightenment: Unintended Consequences
In my late middle age, I emigrated
from linear thought and paper
to the New World of meaning-making
- digital and screens -
and the dubious democracy
of social media.
With the accents of logic and rhetoric
I spoke this new foreign language
of tweets and memes,
aspiring to live the Technology Dream
of constant accessibility
to information and delusions.
(My grandfather told me
before he was born
no plane had flown,
and before he died,
a man walked on the moon.)
The Great Generation saw movies,
still shared pageants and singing,
but welcomed electric light,
phones, radios, and tvs
into their homes, ----
steps towards this hive mind dance.
Matrilineal
I am making the sounds
my mother made -
the steam iron hissing and thumping,
the ironing board creaking -
as she stood in the first kitchen.
Then, I wordlessly wondered
what dress she would iron
if she could hear me
standing in the silence,
a doorway between us.
Now, I have learned
I can iron the wrinkled words,
slapping sounds into the silence
separating us,
smoothing the space between us.
Morning Light
When the earliest light
touches my face,
I wake
to black pine branches against
the palest, palest grey-blue.
Morning has come
and I am called to rise and
find my way
in this always losing
and receiving world.
Learning Living 