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~ because the waves and tumbles of life are only as serious as we make them.

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Tag Archives: self-reflection

Paint

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

be easy on yourself, brave new business leadership, confidence, covering up, Elaine Stirling, free verse, healthy ego, humour, insecurities, poetry for fun, self-reflection, The Corporate Storyteller

paint

No matter how
many coats of paint
I paint the past
it’s passed, the point
of paint, of course,
to beautify, protect,
to cover and reflect
what otherwise I might
reject for being plain,
unvarnished, bare…
bare like branches in
late fall, bare like
weathered sheds
and truth—egad,
no, not the truth!

And when I paint
to cover, glossing over
bumps and flaws, I call
them out, though not
to play, there is no fun
in imperfection—can
there be?

And in my fear
that you might see
the curvatures of life
as she displays herself
with some magnificence
through me, I’ll focus
on your semi-nakedness,
the neither-here-nor-there
of you that is the me, stuck
in the past, reflected, and
I’ll point them out quite
helpfully—just there, a little
flaw. Hold still, I have
the perfect paint.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

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Whither, vane?

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ego, Elaine Stirling, habit, indecision, poetry, predictability, projection, reactiveness, rubielo de la Cérida, self-importance, self-reflection, spinning one's wheels, superficiality, vanity, wordplay

roosterweathervane

Weathervane, you spin and crow
directions of the winds that blow
across my scapes of heart and lust,
but nothing do you know of trust
or what goes on beneath this roof
to set alight the breeze of truth.
And when the weather calms, what
use a cock of iron sitting mute, not
registering sun or dew? Your tail
though carved most fancifully, no sail
can fill if from your inmost will
you cannot grasp a finer skill
or rise beyond incessant vanity,
perfidious and pretty weathervane.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of weathervane from http://www.blackforgeart.co.uk

Triptych

23 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

boundaries, confluence of elements, correspondences of time/space, creative process, disintegration, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, I Ching, Kabbalah, Law of Attraction, nagual, self-importance, self-reflection, Spenserian stanza, The Corporate Storyteller, the Mysteries, triptych, vibrational reality

triptych mirror

I

Unplucked, the highest fruit must fall, the Book
of Changes says of you and me, this day
of twenty-three, disintegrating hook
by crook and other piracies that slay
your notions of lukewarm egalité.
All blood is royal blue until it’s spilled,
all secrets that once shocked us fade to gray.
The fleurs de lis you wore upon your cloak
now decorate the oxen’s humble yoke.

II

Thunder, it is said, in winter months hides
deep in mountain passes, where no one can
penetrate; a solitary force bides
she, till heated whispers of lightning’s plan
arouses her. She creeps across the land
sharp-focused, rumbling through the fertile minds
that have no fear of mysteries, she’ll dam
the rest, their wayward tongues she’ll scorch & bind
and leave you chasing shadows till you’re blind.

III

The purple ash outside my house stands tall.
Descendant of Armada’s fleet, he knows
the names and faces of the ones who call,
regardless of the hour, and he throws
the stubborn profligate as food to crows.
Our moments of past symmetry may shine—
don’t know—but polished copper pots don’t grow
a garden or a book, so leave what’s mine
for me to blend until it turns to wine.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Victorian French Dore Bronze Triptych
mirror from http://www.rubylane.com

What Isn’t (also is)

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, expansion, Law of Attraction, passive aggression, poetry, self-reflection, self-worth, vibrational reality, what we can learn from drama queens

dunce11

There is a kind of friendship
that isn’t really friendship that
involves the placid holding of the
coat of one’s who cool and
playing pool.

There is a kind of romance
that isn’t really romance that
requires passive listening while
the player of the cool recounts
the lovers and the stalkers that
she’s fooled, they are ridiculous,
and all you have to do—in fact,
that’s all you’d better do—
is nod your head.

There is a kind of breakdown
of relationship that isn’t where
the player who pretends that he
fears nothing packs his toys and
slams the doors with huffy noise
and calls the holders of the coats
and all the stalkers that he bitched
about, deciding after all that
they’re his friends.

There is a kind of nothing
more to say and do that frees
the mind to glance behind and
learn that no one is a coat rack
and there’s no such thing as
cooler than, and any time
we think we’re here to teach
another lessons, we’ve a
dunce in our own classroom
made for one.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

How to Hold a Vibration and Grow It

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by elainestirling in General

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry, self-reflection, transformation, vibration

Image by Dean Keller

Spitting mad one night I asked
the rain how, yet again, the good
had dropped away, how pools
once full and fountaining now
gaped, the rusting pipes of nymphs
grown sordid, deaf to majesties
of song perpetual and flow.

We’re good at bringing low,
I said, of angling away
and pulling toward us what
we don’t appear to want, then
shoving it with myriads of
reason for our blame. Where
did we learn this paltry game?

The rain, she did not answer me,
though every drop hit perfectly
upon the rock and spikes of grass
and sparked a connectivity that
didn’t ask of every drip to justify
its time and space, or doubt its
capability to drain the banks
of cloud and never questioned
how her future moistures
would arrive. This I did note.

I visited the woods electric
blue of tamarack and yew
still damp and shivering
with memories of you and
wondered what the chances
were of once again discovering
that life is more, not lessening,
and while I formed these thoughts
a spark of something tremulous
ignited at my ear, and I could
hear the laughter of a worry-free
and blissful creativity. For me?

A plop of gooey sap, it fell upon
my nose; I wiped it off and in
the stickiness opined that what
we think coheres and swiftly
multiplies, the more of same
until we reach a tipping
point, and like the rain,
yes, like the rain…

but then the night grew cold
and bleak, a harshness circled
round me, taunting names and
grudgeries I’d held for aeons
past as if in expectation of a
judge somewhere awaiting my
accounts of who and why
and how and when; and if my
evidence fell short again I’d
fall to someplace lower than
I sought my right to be.

Where lives this judge?
I looked around.

Soaked to the skin, awake,
it mattered not to anyone
how long I stayed, and
though the ghouls they
snapped and frothed at me,
the hellhound tags hung from
their necks aclattering, I smelled
their feebling transparency.

How rank you are, I said with
no great urgency. Those tempting
parts you offer, pull away, then
twist to make the weakness mine
is nothing more than self-occluding
voice, abundancy’s swift measures
to avoid. I shrug you off!

For now that I in lover’s arms
enjoy what grows and bountifies,
I need no longer name the ghosts
of what we tried and failed to grow
in worry’s enervating bitter holds.

Upon that self-affirming thought,
the harshness fell like ebon drapes
and from the east arrayed a sharp,
near blinding brightness, so I turned,
wide-eyed, to greet and saw the
multitudes vibrating, and I walked,
slow smiling, toward the light.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

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