Photography – Page 6 – J. Ruth Kelly

The Peonies Reaching

Make me like the peonies reaching,
ripening and revealing shimmers of light,
born of darkness, from disintegration in a long story’s night
whose tale suggests only seclusion unending and a crushing fate…
until,
until the bursting out upon the day,
until the unfolding from haunts of burial entombing,
until all my songs release fragrance
sweetened by a holy undoing,
whose whispers in moonlight of a sun behind the night
birth soul beyond the doom,
holding sacred sway over a mysterious teaching.

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, 2015, All Rights Reserved

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May 13, 2015May 13, 2015

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Juxtapose

juxtaposed sun’s rays
stirring colours under skin
melting winter’s haze…
reach deeply please into corners still
shuddering shock from isolation
set fire to all the lies we tell ourselves against the fears
burn white to red in holy consummation all these contradictions
claiming our clearest songs and muting every proclamation making
love and art from devastation

j. ruth kelly, 2015, all rights reserved

April 29, 2015April 29, 2015

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Blossoms

all the crushing tides,
rivulets, flashing bolts of
life, light, fire and ice
carve these etchings’ speak
and harden, encase tender
flow while seeds erupt
magic, making me
in spite of, because of all
these shredding life songs

April 6, 2015April 8, 2015

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Set Fire to Heaven…

“I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that no one worships God
for fear of hell or greed of heaven.”
Rabia, Eighth-century Sufi mystic poet

Photo Courtesy of Dave Grant, 2011, 2015

April 5, 2015April 6, 2015

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silence stills

stripping life fells me
white silence stills sweet movement
’til the blooming sings

(I haven’t posted in months due to surreal challenges with CFS/ME and all the stripping life can be even without disease. The passing of two precious souls in February overwhelmed me and well, and. Life will, ultimately, dress us up in our naked humanity revealing the simple truth that with or without great health, with or without traditionally-held realities of identifiable productivity…love is all the reason to keep on, even if it’s a bit of a crawl with rebellious outbursts of dance. Here’s to better days.)

March 11, 2015March 11, 2015

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Shorelines

ego tells me to draw conclusions…shore up my indignation or my melodrama, the one where I’m left out, ignored or otherwise tricked into a situation not best for me…the one where I’m enticed onto the dance floor, courage of a wallflower conjuring possibility…the one where I get there and it’s empty…the one where the latest story plays out ancient history…here, another loss…there, another loss…

see, there now. I can legitimize the pout, the hardening heart; the saga continues.

heart tells me to stay in the game…shore up my courage, stand naked, hold out for better days…perpetuate the script of constancy and hope…keeping afloat fantasies made from valid yearnings…distorting reality…one more swig from the bottle, just one…

see, there it is. I can accept and continue heralding heartfulness in the face of hard, harsh brick wall non-response; the saga continues.

mind tells me to get real…how much more obvious does it have to be before you see, it’s the same dumb sham…you’ve been played…you played yourself too…wake the hell up, chick…run fast and far…fuck ’em…be done and gone…besides, no proof of your perspective as valid, no proof of possibilities good, bad or otherwise, no proof, no nothing but silence… and silence speaks. see how much it meant? nada…nowhere…next?

and now, finally. I can dignify my stupidity by showing I see it, by throwing myself into a race in the opposite direction. there, the saga stops (nah, it continues).

but the shores shape and carve out the landmass… the mist makes feasts and evaporates… myriad possibilities, likelihoods, comfortings and abandonments form character, painting stories on soul’s terrain…somewhere between the melodramatic maybes, foolhardy courage and pessimistic realism is the song of a universe whisking us all onto dance floors we’ve not begun to fathom … and while I can’t stop the tides or discourage another etching on my backside, frontside or otherwise, can’t force justice, or awareness or love or … happy endings… I can let go and let it be as I move on, away from conclusions…embracing the way of nature … ‘though it seems fairly obvious sometimes…

all I know is this: I don’t know. I see all the possibilities in situations left languishing, cut short violently or otherwise aborted by unfortunate events. but. I don’t know.

move me, life, beyond judging what is not mine to judge… move me, great waters, into the floating real of what I can do for me right here, right now in this warm and gentle sea…

photo by ryan mcguire - bells design — photo by ryan mcguire – bells design

December 2, 2014December 2, 2014

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Earth Awaits

brilliant-coloured birds tend their silence here, perching on stillness and heart’s ache, a hushed fear catching in their throats, poised against a hope we’ve lost sight of in life’s cruel twists…

whose song will they next sing for us, breaking out upon the night a memorial of life precious, fleeting? surely their melodies weave eternal tapestries from the light of each heart that has ached and joyed before us and will flow onward, grasping our own and those yet to come…

let us hear their silence and know all the earth aches for each one of us.

and when their songs fall again on our ears, may we be gently enclosed in the comfort of their epochs, our stories alighting on trees, interwoven with the spirits of all nature, whispering into valleys, bursting along rivers we may never see, yet filling hearts with melodies uniquely given by each of our lives…

let us hear the love and know all the earth awaits our answering songs.

but for now the womb of silence weeps. the songbirds listen,
holding sorrow’s breath…

j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2014

November 5, 2014November 5, 2014

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Hammock’s Sway

Healing hammock ride the sky, in my lingering repose.
Silence washing, flooding,

Crash this deafening noise, all the clamoring
impossibilities’ haunt of rhythm’s worst explosion, enigma’s crueler clarity
suggesting daunting end of days sooner as I

long for, work for, breathe for later, much later.

Wipe away my necessary practice,
the trauma of doling out tomorrows’ chances
via feverish weighing today of…
how much too much, just enough
or not enough now will facilitate more of a future, not less…
why must all these labors somehow suggest
no now and no when or where in which to be or go to or later for which to aim
when their aim is to seize assurance?

So, in my fevered necessities,
somehow slip me past the grasp that deadens days
and back into flow…

Take me to obliteration lovely, blanking out the doling minutes, seconds…
Bind me to places where eternity emerges, maybe there shimmering
on the edge of twilight…or here unveiling the timeless rule of leaves,
and trees holding hammock’s sway.

October 24, 2014

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Sun’s Seek

Gut raw reveal or run. Don’t you weary of holding it all in?
What is it you think your breath will collide with
if you exhale sooner rather than later?
Some untimely death of all your delusions?
Or is it the fear of all that involuntary relaxation,
opening self as soon as you let it all out,
something might penetrate, find your hiding places,
discover your humanity?
Some inner code might unfold. Some quiet desperation may wail.
You might feel something more real than anything experienced before or before.
Or ever.
Or maybe, once wails are spent and feelings felt
and you find you didn’t disintegrate into complete annihilation of existence
-though you may not be sure who this emerging you now is-
you bloom
in the quiet aftermath
of total bankruptcy,
loss of all you perceive as wealth.
Blooming songs long unsung, uncovered in sun’s insisting seek.