A Poem A Day, sort of, April 2025

1 April 2025

Eight Years On

How can I write when

My words rise and get jammed

In my dam of grief

©️ Ellen Apple 

2 April 2025

Spring erupts in my world

Clouds of gold

Layers of purple

Somulence seeps in

Through cracks  

Crevices

Felt 

Yet unseen

©️Ellen Apple 

03 April 2025

I have never been good at

Staying in my lane

Coloring inside the lines

Going with the flow

I am much better at

Forging a new path

Doodling in the margins

Making waves

But those are not bad things

Just me things

And if I'm not mistaken 

They are you things too

Because those constructs

Constrict

And dear one 

We are meant to

Soar

©️Ellen Apple 

04 April 2025

Wisteria gracefully draped

Waltzing in a gentle spring breeze

Daffodils greet in a gloriously staggered row

Cannas emerge from their wintry nap

Elephant Ears unfurling 

Ah April is in my yard

©️Ellen Apple 

6 April 2025

🎐 chimes sing

🐶 puppy snoozes 

😺 kitty stretches

Ah

Sunday 

©️Ellen Apple 

 

07 April 2025

My heart is storing 

Placards on my life calendar 

"Yesterday was Birthday of..."

"It has been X years since..."

And they increase in number and weight as I am increasing in age and memories 

©️Ellen Apple 

08 April 2025

It was1986 and April 

When my father went ahead

On or about this date

He was laid to rest

Snow flurried in my 

Appalachian mountains 

That day

Sure would be nice to hear

"Bertie" in his baritone

Just one more time

Hug them

Love them

None of us live forever

©️Ellen Apple 

10 April 2025

Quietude descends

Blanketing cacophony 

Muting discord

©️Ellen Apple 

11 April 2025

I walk with long strides

Curl my lip cock my left brow

I am Poss's daughter

©️Ellen Apple 

12 April 2025

Þhêŕè āřĕ mæņý wàªý§

Ťœ ñøț bə ćľeàř

But love is always understood

©️Ellen Apple

The Time In-between

That liminal place

Twixt here and there

Almost now yet

Not quite then

Gloaming of the 'eve

Breaking of the morn

Halcyon Days 

When the kingfisher reigns

The time in-between 

Perhaps we may

Or yet may not

Find each other then

Again

© Ellen Apple 

13 April 2023

13 April 2025

I have had a weepy day

As many of my beloved dead

Have detoured my way

Roger and Chuck and Momma and Daddy

Even my first husband Moe and my brother Larry

I've been working on some emotional spring cleaning

Trying to get rid of the doldrums

But keeping the deeper meanings 

I often scatter my mental detritus liberally amongst my meanderings

So I thought more manageable scoops might be a pleasant change

Thus I am settling some regrets and polishing up the glimmer

Trying to make my emotional baggage a wee bit slimmer

©️Ellen Apple 

14 April 2025

yellow daffodils

nodding and seabreezes flowing

at suns arrival 

showers were then gently ebb

ancient dance celebrates life

©️Ellen Apple 

15 April 2025

A Healing Moment

Close you eyes release 

All stress and anxiety

As I hold you close 

And we just relax for now 

We just hugged each other 

©️Ellen Apple 

16 April 2025

Time is a wee bit tricky 

I have discovered

An ebb a flow

A pull a push

Ohh too soon

Not soon enough

Savoring is not easy

Let it flow

Let it go 

To hold to it akin to

Holding starlight

In my hand

Only I ever know it was there

Yet I am not quite certain 

©️Ellen Apple 

17 April 2025

A Haiku:

Beaming sunlight splashes 

Wren song in the mimosa

Bring calm of spirit

A Lune:

Distant traffic hum

Broken by

Roosters loud call 

An American Sentence:

searching for hope when discord and suspicion easily overwhelm 

©️Ellen Apple 

18 April 2025

A lot can be learned

Whilst living with cats

Don't tarry overlong after eating

Check frequently on the wellbeing of your house mates and monitor their bodily functions and ablution 

Being an official taster doesn't include actually tasting but requires placing the nose directly on the food or in the beverage

The best naps are taken mid-day in sunlight beaming through a window by a bed

You can heal unseen hurts and trauma with cuddles

©️Ellen Apple 

19 April 2025

wind-chimes

sing

invocation

©️Ellen Apple 

20 April 2025

When I was a wee lass 

With a Toni perm and pretty dress

My big sister donned in cardigan 

We both wore startled gazes

All dressed up for Easter eggs

And çhocolate bunnies 

That would magically appear when we returned

Sunday School was always first

*this picture was taken on an Easter morning, I think it was 1964. We had hats that year, too. Mine was a 'sailors hat' with an elastic that fit under my chin so I wouldn't lose it. My dress was brown, with a border of rainbow rickrack around the hem.

©️Ellen Apple 

21 April 2025

In lieu of my daily poem

"Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is …. life is good when you are happy, but much better when others are happy because of you."

Remembering my mother, Janet Marie Slade was Smith, January 9, 1933 ~ April 21, 2019.

I did not write the above, nor did Pope Francis, though it has been attributed to him. Sources indicate it may have roots in the Vedas. The Vedas are the oldest and most revered religious texts of Hinduism.

I appreciate the text and spirit of this quote because it speaks to the lessons we three Smith siblings learned by living with examples given daily by both Momma and Daddy. They were loving, caring, family and community minded people. At both of their wakes and funerals the number of people who mourned them was humbling. 

May this day, and each that follows, be one of joy, love, community, and

service for each of you.

22 April 2025

(Today is Earth Day)

We have bones

   Gaia has stones

We have blood

   Gaia has water

We have skin

   Gaia has soil

We have hair

   Gaia has trees

We breathe oxygen 

   Gaia gives us oxygen

We eat food to grow

   Gaia grows the food we eat

We need Gaia

   We are of Gaia

We would not be were

   Gaia not a willing host

©️Ellen Apple

23 April 2025

thick air

cloying humidity 

heavy thunderstorms

summer's here already?

©️Ellen Apple 

24 April 2025

Where lies the line

Between literal and ethereal 

Is it a scar from words 

Cutting a tender mind 

Or a salve soothing 

The just scraped knee

Is it hope

Is it resignation 

Where lies the line

In you?

©️Ellen Apple

25 April 2025

my afternoon happy place

having a lay down 

with my cats

©️Ellen Apple 

26 April 2025

plaintive cries

from the hallway

velcro kitty calls

©️Ellen Apple 

27 April 2025

in the gloaming of today

i sit and refect

on my actions

were they 

enough

©️Ellen Apple

28 April 2025

Returning the

Here and now

From a whirlwind 

Journey to the 

There and when

Leaves me 

In a daze

Where book intoxication 

Holds sway

©️Ellen Apple 

29 April 2025

yearning for what was not

regretting what actually was

our minds reconstruct

so easily

memories 

©️Ellen Apple 

30 April 2025

dream is done

song is sung

new one begun

©️Ellen Apple 

From Kitty Hawk to the Moon

From Kitty Hawk to the Moon

I turn(ed) 66 on December 16, 2024. I read somewhere recently that in just 66 years humankind went from the first flight at Kitty Hawk to the moon. I then as I am wont to do, looked up first flight. It was 17 December 1903. The first moon landing was 20 July 1969. So it was actually 5 months shy of 66 years. 

I feel at times my years are passing excruciatingly slow, like the hours and days and weeks that led up to those few moments on the sand in NC must have seemed to the Wright brothers. Then, it is though I merely blinked and went from 9 in 1967, as I was in this picture:

to this, taken just a few weeks ago:

I see little of 9 year-old in 66 year-old Ellen, but all of those memory Polaroids and Super-8s from my life are the milestones and wee pebbles along my life's journey.  

I never thought I would see and do some things I have experienced, and yet there was so much I reached for that never came to be. 

Marriages, childbirth, too many deaths. So many jobs, so many satisfied impulses and missed opportunities. Is this the end, then? A swansong, a final act, the beginning of the ending? 

Lord, I hope not. 

The 10 days preceeding and 10 days following the winter solstice are called the Halcyon Days, a time out of time. I like that. Inside, I have often felt a person out of time, out of step or sync. An intellectual Benjamin Buttons. When I was the age of 9 I was prone to seek out the company of the older adults in my neighborhood. I would "visit" with them often. I loved hearing their stories of the past, looking at momentous and photos. Like an old woman in a little girl's brain wanting to remember what was...

I have a good life and am looking forward to seeing what the next decades bring me!

Winter Memories

 I can remember icy cold and snowy Christmases when I was a child. I can also remember the Christmas I was in the second grade, that would have been December 1966 I believe, when it was so balmy we played with our superballs and roller skates on the sidewalk Christmas afternoon. We got so warm we took off our jackets. At thar time my family rented a house from a Mrs. Mullins on E 1st Street in Richlands,Virginia, the 4th house on the right, beside Ewell and Goldie Baisden. That street is right beside the Clinch River, and we didn't live there long. Our house had a basement ans was heated by a coal furnace. The winter was mild all season and the river flooded that spring. Floated Momma's washing machine and put the fire out in the furnace. There were earthworms and mud puppies all over the years and street when the water went down.

Once we moved up to the house on Virginia Avenue, there were several Christmases when we had Norman Rockwell holidays. Packed snow and gravel  the side streets in  town. My father's brother, Norman and his wife Irene "Red" lived a block from us at the corner of E 4th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.  One Christmas we walked up to their house in knee deep (if you were a child) snow and had Christmas dinner with them. I believe Frank and Terri, my cousins,  were grown and living elsewhere by then.

Virginia Carol, Ed and I earned pocket money in several different endeavors as children, and the most dependable and lucrative for us was delivering the daily paper,  The Bluefield Daily Telegraph,  in Dalton Addition, where we lived. When it was real cold in winter, regardless of how bundled up you got, legs and cheeks would get so cold they burned and tingled.  I can recall putting on long johns, jeans, then sweatpants.  We would wrap scarves around our faces and my nose would run and the snot in my nostrils would freeze. We also wore bread bags over our socks in case the snow got in our boots so our feet would stay dry.  Each of us had between 25 and 35 customers. On Sunday's Daddy would take the car and  drop the papers at different spots so we didn't have to carry so many at once. We rolled and bagged them.

We also had a widowed aunt, Zelma Woody who lived next door to Aunt Sue and Uncle Bob Harris on Lee Street in town. It wasn't uncommon for there to be family gatherings at their homes during the holidays. One memorable time we carried home a pie pan covered with aluminum foil that had jello salad squares on it the Aunty Z sent because we begged off seconds because we were 'full as ticks'. In actuality,  it was what she called perfection salad. Lime Jell-O with black walnuts, sandwich dill slices, carrots and celery served on iceberg lettuce leaves. It may have had cottage cheese in it as well. I 'accidentally ' tripped going up the walk to our house and darn if that pie plate didn't tip sideways and the salad fell into the snow. After the thaw there were dill pickles and celery in the slush.  Even the stray dogs wouldn't eat it.

Well, there are other winter and holiday memories clamoring to get written down but I think that is enough for now. This is Christmas Eve 2022 and the weather in coastal NC is cold and windy but thankfully not white or icy. May you each bask in the warmth of Christmas memories and make new ones this year. 

Stained Glass Windows

Stained Glass Windows

Stained and tattered

Bruised and worn

Any pretense at beauty

Callously shorn

Glass so fragile

Shards so sharp

No ground to shelter

Nor flourishing harp

Windows on the naked soul

Shudders the graze

Of life’s sharp thorns

Such are my vagabond ways

~ Ellen Apple

19 January 2017

New Month, Another New "Normal"

It has been forever since I blogged. As in years.

Losing Roger broke a part of me, and I suppose I have spent the last three years trying to figure out how to fix me. Again.

After Roger died, my brother Larry died. Then my sister in law  Kathy. Then my mother in law Ann. Then my mother last March.  If our reality, our beingness as people, is irrevocably defined by our connections to one another, then what happens when we lose these connections?

There is a ponderous weight to grief that pulls you down, that drowns you. Then there is the after. The dawning knowledge of a severed cord, a rope that tied you to the here and now. Then the weight of that connection is released and suddenly the lack pushes you up and away, into thinner air and fewer connections. A bit of dandelion fluff just adrift on unseen currents, no destination or plan. Just floating.

So here are some of my days...

1 May 2020

Drove to the park at the water. The park is closed but was able to sit in the car and gaze at the gentle movements of the water in the Cape Fear River. Bald Head Island looks so serene across the way. The sea gulls were raucous but entertaining.  There were a few people fishing from the public access. I suppose the pier was closed as well. I count the afternoon a success.

2 May 2020

6ws⁷

Contemplating-
Quiet
Respite
Restores
Quarantine
Rankles

3 May 2020

7WS

Cerulean Sunday
Quietude reigns
Sacred contemplation
Meditation

4 May 2020

5 May 2020

Stepped outside to an encompassing aroma of sweetness.  There are at least 3 varieties of clover currently blooming around the front door.

My langniappe of the day.




6 May 2020

So there was the time I told Roger I was making BLTs for lunch and I make BECs instead.
Because somehow my brain considered Bacon Egg and Cheese = Bacon Lettuce and Tomato.
He looked so puzzled...


7 May 2020

Jasmine
Honeysuckle
Wisteria
Clover
Heady aromas waft through the air
Then ...
Stench from the paper mill
Keeps it real
🙄

8 May 2020

In the rebirth of the day
May birdsong chase your blues away
And should no birds begin to sing
May grace a time of respite bring

Tree of Life

More

Kind

Grace

remember

One day at a time

One way at a time

One person at a time

We each have the capacity

To be the change we want to see

And make the life we want to live

By extending

And receiving

More

Kind

Grace

I found this picture on Facebook earlier

I really liked it

So I am sharing it with you today

were it not for us

Who would have thought 
the unthinkable
Who would have dreamed
the impossible
Who would have sought
the unattainable
Who would have seemed
unknowable
Were it not for 
the dreamers
the schemers
the artists
the writers
Were it not
for us?

~ Ellen Apple
13 January 2017