Christmas Tree

Sharing a photo of our tree this year and sending love and light and joy around the world......

Shadows on the Carpet - Clarity

Clarity is the 9th and final section of "Shadows on the Carpet".  The journey has taken us from the darkness to the light. Today I am sharing the poem 'Clarity'.

photo by AVR

Clarity

See the silence in your mind

Hear the colors of your heart

Be still and travel far

Search wide to find the

Treasure that is truth

As colored sands of time flow

Like rivers into eternity

And in this moment

Creation is our only reality

© Alice Vedral Rivera 3/17/12

Sometimes I Get a Good Feeling..... (1)

I started this last year about things that happen to me that uplift me.  Today, I am sharing the 1st one.

Sometimes I Get a Good Feeling …..

photo by AVR

Yesterday, as I got off the ‘L’ (for those who aren’t from Chicago – the ‘L’ is the elevated and in places not elevated CTA train system), I heard a shout behind me which I ignored.  The next thing I knew, a tall, young black man was beside me saying, “Excuse me but I’m so happy. I turned 27 today”.  I congratulated him on his birthday as we kept walking.  He was smiling and I caught a whiff of alcohol as he asked where I was going.  I told him that my husband was picking me up to which he replied, “Your husband is a lucky man”.

He repeated that he turned 27 that day and his exuberance was disarming.  When he asked me what age I turned that day, I just said that I was much older than 27.  He said that I looked about 35, for which I thanked him and told him he had made my day.  I am in fact, a short, fat 61 year old white woman (although I see myself as young and skinny).

This young man’s joy at turning 27 was becoming contagious.  He asked if he could get a hug.  I hesitated because my husband of almost 18 years (who for some reason still gets jealous when he sees other men pay attention to me) should have been turning the corner at any minute.  Then I remembered Leo Buscalia’s words, “Hugs not drugs”, and gave him one.

As he went skipping off, I saw our car turning the corner.  I shared the experience with my hubby and I couldn’t forget the unbridled joy this young man radiated and how guarded I had been at first because of the very real threats of violence we face from each other during these times.  I thought about how it is a shame that this is the type of world we are living in, but that moments like these, reaffirm my belief that all is not lost. Change for the better is here and now if we all believe and change the viral meme from violence, hate, fear to joy and love and light.
  

Reflecting on this experience, I realized that this is the kind of thing my youngest son had probably done when he was younger and still might do, i.e. share his joy on his birthday with total strangers and ask for hugs.

There is hope.  Believe it.  Share your joy with someone today or let someone share theirs with you.  Spread the love, for we truly are all one in spirit.   Sometimes I get a good feeling…….

Current Project - Shadows on the Carpet

I am looking for funding to publish my new book of poetry titled, "Shadows on the Carpet".  It will be a compilation of my darker poems - dark shadows from my past expressed in varying poetic shades of gray where the past meets the future as memories in the present.

Because I have been told that the book needs to end on an 'up' note, it will be a progression from the darkness to the light with roughly 100 poems divided into 9 sections.

 

Less than 1% of my poems come out of the blue of left field. More than 99% of my poems are very personal to me even those that are inspired by outside influences such as a visual (painting, photo, nature, etc.), a word overheard, a scent, a taste or the feel of an object or event.  They stem from a seed deep inside me based on my continually changing perspective of some real experience in my life.  That stem then grows and morphs into a completed poem, colored by time, mellowing or sharpening into shapes that often surprise me. 

Many of my poems are abstract or written in the third person - mainly those that are rooted in extreme pain and darkness.  I need to step back and out of that pain and darkness to articulate it.  This makes it easier to then weave other elements into the poem (relationship/social/political under/over tones) sometimes intentionally but many times the message just shows up in the completed poem.  I suspect that the poems and songs of the exiled Czech poet and singer Karel Kryl had a tremendous influence on my writing in that respect.  Some of my family and friends now actively look for the layers in my poems as they read and re-read them.