Poetic Healing Archives · Ashley Barnes

All Things Must Change

“All things change,” I was reminded,
Yet I never have watched a summer go by
Without sadness,
The darkening of the days,
The cooling of the nights,
Songbirds and children trying to make the best
Of the waning hours of warmth and sunlight,
Cool, clear night skies
Under a harvest moon
Until it’s dark to rise and dark to lie down,
Solemn hibernation under a pile of blankets
And I just didn’t realize how tired I was,
Still, there’s that distinct twinge of autumn blues
Maybe all things must change
But resistance is in my nature

©SpritLed 2019

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Let’s Be Real

Poetic Healing

What if, each day
She unzipped from her humanity
And walked through the world
As the light she knows is?

What if she shined without abandon,
All her perceived imperfections cast aside,
All her doubts drowned
On the rocky cliffs of her highest tide

What if she shed her masks
Exposed, raw, healing
For all who crave realness
For all who need her light

©SpiritLed 2019

Photo by Rhett Wesley on Unsplash

Prayer for Rest

Poetic Healing

In the quiet
you rest,
While also in the quiet
We take up the quests
You so nobly held for lifetimes,
You lay down your arms
As we raise ours in humble servitude

Rest dear one,
Let us proceed in your stead,
Until the light of dawn appears,
Until you can draw the sleep from your weary eyes,
Rest upon our shoulders
As we carry you home

©SpiritiLed 2019

Photo by Luigi Boccardo on Unsplash

Longing

Poetic Healing

Longing for belonging,
For a path to go home,
For my songs of peace
To blow in the wind
And reside in the hearts of men

Longing for the great gray wolf
To howl her songs of protection
And fierce boundaries,
Safe from the dark night
In which she prowls

Longing for the soft caress,
The endless lovers’ touch
Deep in the night,
Deep in the soul of forgiveness

Longing for the sun to rise on peace
And set on injustice,
Our internal wars extinguished,
Our raging quieted by our love

The Music of Healing

Poetic Healing

Like music,
Memories come in waves,
Each note a discordant piece
Of a greater symphony
Played in silence for all these years

Now uncovered,
Revealed,
With the directive to somehow make a melody
Where once there was only silence,
Where once, tears never flowed

To take the tender music of youth
And re-record the notes
So that discord may become harmony
And each note out of place
May become immortalized as the sharp steps
Which lead to wholeness

This Creative Life

Poetic Healing

Discipline,
A sign of destruction or denial?
Or rather the decadence of a man
Who cannot move forward,
Displaying doubt

And yet, when imagination takes root
In the dying wasteland of order,
Like a disease of chaos slowly creeping through,
Destroying all in its path with disorder and disarray,
Its only casualty the destruction of the mind which cries,
“Only THIS way”
And brings forth the great deity which anoints me
To this creative life