Stronger than I think

Posted on by estlh

You aspired to silence me;
To still my tongue
And prevent the telling of my tale.


For a while I acquiesced,
My passion gone,
Crushed by the demands of solitude.

I lay mute and diffident
And languished long
In lethargic denial of strength.


But do not think that you have won,
Have gained your end
And doused the fire that burns within me.


For though the embers grow dim
New breath brings life,
Reigniting flames that grow once more.


My voice will be heard again
Like none before
Bursting forth, my song will carry truth


To all who have hearts open to hear.

3.12.24

Posted on by estlh

The prompt for today is ‘anticipation’

We await the day
When our certain hope becomes
A promise fulfilled

Our preparations
Build as we look to the day
of celebration

Anticipation
Fuels our frantic busyness
As the time draws close.

Frustrated we pray
Will we ever be ready
For the coming peace

2.12.24

Posted on by estlh

Day 2 of the poetry prompt advent and the prompt is patience.

The in-between
A time of malcontent
When what is no longer amiss
Is not yet as it should be
Patience does not come naturally
The grumbles burst forth unrestrained
By manners or propriety
And annoyed by my own agitation
My hackles strain skyward

Yet still you do not respond
My unanswered pleas for conclusion
Hang unrecognised between us
The strides we made in danger of being overlooked
When still our destination is not gained

All in good time my child, all in good time.

My petulant cry –
“Now is a good time”
Dies on my lips
As I finally meet your gaze
And am engulfed in the love within.

All in good time my love, all in good time

December 1st

Posted on by estlh

So I found a poetry prompt advent calendar. Day 1’s prompt was simply ‘A candle’

The room is still
Save for the flickering light of the candle on the mantel
It’s orange cast dancing on the wall behind.
The persistent motion is mesmerising as she watches through the window
The light shed by the candle does not spread far,
Showing her barely more than the silhouette of the familiar old chair
His chair
In its rightful position by the hearth.
But the hearth is cold and empty.
Summoning her courage, she takes the few small steps to the door.
She pauses, sighs, hand on the handle before,
Resigned, she pushes it open.
The sudden chill that floods the room
Is all-encompassing
And the feeble flame is no match for it.
As the door shuts behind her
All is
Darkness

Twisted

Posted on by estlh

I have a stash of old notebooks full of thoughts and scribblings. Some pages hold just odd lines or paragraphs, some poems I have maybe just started and never finished. And some have finished poems that I have long forgotten writing, or have never shown to anyone. I can lose hours reading back through these notebooks. Sometimes I am looking for inspiration – to take a line or a half finished poem and make something of it. But also I get lost in memories. Many of my poems, especially the older ones are really just me putting my feelings down on paper. As I read them I can remember what I was doing when I wrote them, or why I was feeling a certain way. I can also see how I have changed over the years – how as I have grown my perspective has changed and my confidence grown. This poem was written at a period when I was lacking in self confidence and was a bit of a social chameleon.

I twisted myself up

I turned round and round

and got all tangled.

And then I had to unwind myself,

the other way round and round.

And when I fell on my behind

it wasn’t funny;

it hurt.

Even though I deceived you

when I sat there and laughed.

But the tears that rolled

down my reddened cheeks

were not the result of a

burst of hysteria.

My eyes all screwed up,

the tears fell from

sudden pain.

Riddle

Posted on by estlh

I have been sorting through some old notebooks lately. Over the years I have written hundreds of poems, but only a small proportion have made it onto this blog so far. I thought it was maybe time to share more of these poems so over the next few weeks I will he posting a mixture of old and new stuff.

I don’t remember what exactly inspired this poem, but it was the first poem in a long while that I wrote with rhyme.

If I were you and you were me
Then who is that sat there?
If you were him and he were me
You really wouldn’t care.

I wonder if our quest for truth
Has stumbled off the trail –
We took the path least trodden on
and now our quest will fail.

I’m not sure even who you are –
I started out alone.
I think I might be dreaming now,
this truth I’ve never known.

If I were young and you were old
Then I would be quite green,
You’d fill my head with stories long
From days I’d never seen.

If I were old and you were young
I’d tell you then to hold your tongue.

Three times

Posted on by estlh

Often I will have inspiration for just a few lines of a poem. I’ll write them down and come back to them at a later date to write the whole thing. A while ago I wrote the first Stanza of this, originally about a very different matter. However when I came back to it the poem has gone in a totally different direction. So here, very different to what I intended, is the finished poem.

The first time I said no I meant it
The second I wasn’t so sure
The third time I said no I knew that
I’d bend if you asked me once more

The first time I said yes I waivered
The second I felt that I must
The third time I knew I had no choice
To say no would lose me your trust

The first time I walked out I tested
The second I still wasn’t sure
The third time I walked out I knew that
I’d never walk back through that door

The first time I felt love he meant it
The second he meant it much more
The third time 1 felt love I knew that
I’d always be scared and unsure

The first time he promised I questioned
The second I silently wept
The third time he promised I knew that
Once more and 1 might just accept

The next time he promised he held me
In earnest looked straight in my eyes
Whatever wherever whenever
He’d always be right by my side

And that time I really believed it
For once more my heart was made whole
With him by my side I have risen
And reclaimed the me that you stole

At the well

Posted on by estlh

A few years ago I wrote a poem about the women in the bible who encountered Jesus. In my poetry journal today the prompt was to write a poem from the point of view of someone in a well known story. I chose the woman at the well.

He saw me.
I had come alone to draw, unseen, unjudged, from the well.
He spoke to me
Asking for a drink from one he should have ignored
He told me
That I should never thirst again – he would make it so
He revealed to me
The truth of who he was and why he came
He knew me
He knew the very worst but did not shrink from me

When previously I had felt judgement,
here I met compassion
And for the first time I felt free.
I found truth,
I found purpose,
And I felt beautiful.

Betrayal

Posted on by estlh

Sometimes I am quite deliberate in my poetry writing. Sometimes when I start to write a poem I start with just a phrase or couple of lines and have no idea where it is going to go. This was one of those poems, it wasn’t really until I reached the last verse that the pieces fell into place.

I took my lover to the sea
Where I made him beg to marry me
I grasped the heart he proffered me
And flung it hence into the sea.

I took my lover near the sky
And made him look into my eye
And swear to love me til he die
Then I did poke him in the eye

I took my lover atop the hill
And begged to know if he did still
Love me for sufficient thrill,
I threw my lover down the hill

I knew my lover was not true
And felt the sting of trust eschewed
I did what I had to do
To heal the heart he’d rent in two.

The Injustice in the Corner

Posted on by estlh

Inspired by a ‘ thought for the day’ that was shared at The Arches project last week, this just kind of flowed out in response.

The injustice in the corner
Is ever so small
I turn my back, don’t see it
Ignoring your call

The injustice in the corner
I do not wish to see
Though slowly growing larger
Does not yet bother me

The injustice in the corner
Is no longer small and faint
I have to now acknowledge it
To hear your complaint

The injustice in the room now
So clearly in my view
Can still be ignored if I
Close my eyes and ears to you

The injustice I must see now
I’ll stand and rail against
But words are feeble weapons
And my strikes make no offence

The injustice right before me
I try to reason away
But all that I’m achieving
Is a break, a slight delay

The injustice in my face now
Continues hour by hour
So I must wrestle with it
And try to staunch it’s power

It may seem overwhelming
But yet I’m not alone
The seeds of revolution
Have already been sown

And so we come together
Injustice to oppose
Our common purpose strengthens us
And hope for justice grows