Category: Free Verse

lucky one

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

I believe I read your character accurately
when I met you.

I believe you to be
humble, genuine, kind, loyal, loving
still, now,
as you seemed before.

I believe you to be
‘one of the good ones’, a shining light
upon this Earth
and the lives of those you touch,
including mine.

I will remember you in fondness,
in hope for the future, your future
and what you will create for all of us.
I will cherish your light
and the way you reminded me
that gut instincts, sometimes, are spot-on.

I am lucky to have met you,
and cherish the changes evolving in me
since that day,
the changes you remain oblivious to,
for the better.

needles and cones

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

The spruce tree
stands tall, stands proud
for all it has lived through.
Heat, cold, summers, winters many,
build and strengthen its trunk.

An ongoing cycle of renewal
adorns the grass and ground beneath.
Discarded needles and cones
cover the last remaining blades of grass.
The tree knows
how to let go of what no longer serves,
making space for new,
for the future,
letting go of the past.

I rake and collect the castaways.
I see no point in tallies or counts
for the total would near infinity.

I have needles and cones
to castaway too,
if only I could be as free
as the tree
in doing so.

punishing fire

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Can I offer enough forgiveness
to my past self, to you,
to erase the pain, the confusion, the betrayal,
burning from your eyes
into mine, that night?
Your eyes burn into mine, still,
whenever I think of you.
That fire is the first thing I see,
still feel.

If I’m meant to feel that fire forever,
a hard punishment it would be.
Hard, and justified.

come and go

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

People come,
enter our lives,
often we don’t see them coming
until there they are, standing in front of us,
asking us to join in their lives, too.

People go,
often too soon,
before we have a chance to say goodbye.
In their shadows we remain
drowning in words unsaid,
yearning for a reunion of any kind
to lighten the load on our shoulders.

People come, and they go,
sometimes to make room for more new arrivals
for we can only have so many, right?

When they go, I wonder where they go.
Do they, too, carry words left unsaid
like me?

April snow

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Nestled between the needles,
white amongst the green,
tucked into crevasses to hide
from the warm, yellow sun
rising.

We, the snowflakes,
will soon die here.
Our lives are short, but sweet
in April.

pressure

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Stop putting so much damn pressure
on yourself.
You are not in a life-or-death situation.
If you make a mistake
(what classifies a mistake anyway?)
there will be opportunities to do better next time.

If you keep holding out
scared of imagined consequences
preparing for remediation of the fallout
without taking action at all,
you will kill yourself
before getting a chance to see the success
beyond the worrying,
unwarranted.

standards

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

Please, oh please,
stop being so hard on yourself
day after day.

Who sets the bars, the standards
you race to meet?
The person who sets them
maintains the power to change them.
Is it you?

new world

~ jennadawn ~ Leave a comment

When you start shifting your attention
to water the flowers you want to bloom,
things change
within you, and around you.

Shifts bring change.
They allow us to see, envision,
a world different from what we lived before.
Change can feel uncomfortable
and in discomfort
we seek to find comfort,
maybe back in the place we came from.
Running backwards is not the answer
we need,
or actually want.

What if
the new world you see before you
is where you’re meant to be?

Listen,
as it releases a deep exhale,
rustling a gentle breeze across your skin,
extending its arms to welcome you
here.
This world, this new world,
has been waiting for you.