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?