Category:

Poetic Thoughts

Poetry Blog

Green!

by Deb Strafuss March 17, 2011

Beauty! Joy!
glorious thing!
didn’t wait
peeked through the snow
and wants to grow!

Half my yard still blanket-wrapped
half uncovered shows
its love for life and sky of blue
the sun has warmth – it all feels new!

Oh Joy! Once more – again – is seen
The joy of Brown becoming Green!

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day – as we remember the saint revered for bringing “new life” to Ireland, so the celebration of this life heralds the spring solstice, the bringing of new life to a winter weary world needful of its own waking. With the leprechauns of love and hope and impish fun sprinkling the earth with drops of life begun, we will dance a spring of newness too, filled with life and touched with dew.

March 17, 2011 0 comments

People

Amazing Ab Woman….

by Deb Strafuss March 14, 2011

If I go to the gym early enough…
She is there
Working her abs till the sweat drips off her back.
Where does she come from?
Where does she go?
These are things I may never know

But whenever she’s here
she inspires, it’s clear
I wince and I scrunch
to see her crunch
every ab until it’s defined

I admire her strength – her perseverance more
That she pushes herself beyond what is there
doesn’t flinch, doesn’t stop
Inspiring me to count the cost
and pay it.

I am inspired to honor amazing everyday women this month. They are all around us all the time, in many little ways. Take some time to look at yourself – you may be amazed at who you find, hiding behind the stuff of your ordinary self. A person of courage and strength, hope, dignity and care, intelligent, creative – be all that you can be, let yourself out and share. The rest of us can only be enriched by the gifts that you dare!

March 14, 2011 1 comment

Aung San Suu Kyi

by Deb Strafuss March 8, 2011

It is National Women’s History Month

I did not even know one existed until I was asked to participate

Here I honor not women who have made history, but women who are making history.

Nationally – internationally – those who live for it, and those who have died for it. The political leaders of countries we would count as less feministically advanced than us, yet whose heroes are female political leaders who have sacrificed their families and their lives for their countries…

Aung San Suu Kyi – you will not hear as much about her as you will Nelson Mandela

Yet she has paid her nation’s price in 18 years of imprisonment, separated from her two sons and husband, to stand for democracy and freedom in Burma

Why is democracy and freedom in Burma of any importance to us snuggled here in the states??

Because what enlarges one enlarges the world, and what diminishes one, diminishes the world.

Whether we know it or not, feel it or not, see it or not, believe it or not….

We are connected…………………….

Here’s to the courage of woman – as brave and as strong and as free

as any of man that would see or be

spirit is the same

it knows not face or name

nor race

nor sex

nor anything in between

It simply is what it seems

March 8, 2011 0 comments

Nature

March Winds

by Deb Strafuss March 1, 2011

Signs of Spring
Buddha’s head peeks out at me
from “oer receding snows
It’s warm, yet a cold wind blows

The frozen signs of Christmas
lost to banks of January storms
are readable, not reachable,
anachronistic symbols
of time out worn.

El Nina blows across the snows
a devil in her fury
picking up the melting frost
hurling it aloft
storm-tossed she moves the moisture on
to other climes…

March 1, 2011 0 comments

Politics

Celebration and Deliberation

by Deb Strafuss February 12, 2011

Joy, celebration, and the clear after effects of revolution.

What are we building…?

Where are we going?

What is our next course…

The consequences of victory are:

A new Beginning.

Once again, we watch, wait, hope and stand with the Egyptian people as they move to deliberation, formation and re-construction.

This people have taken back their power, proving once again, that expression, not oppression, is the key to governance. Every where in the world, and to the degree that it is restricted or denied, self expression pushes back. A people must be free to express their diversity. Strength and survival rely upon our ability to create and innovate. When those energies are restricted, a time bomb is in place. The human spirit must express and create, or its energies will turn to hate….

February 12, 2011 0 comments

People Politics

Cry of the people

by Deb Strafuss February 11, 2011

It is so hard, from such a distance and from the outside, to see or judge clearly – to make gray areas black and white – yet the voice of the people raised in Egypt reminds me of one raised many thousands of years ago in the same place by the Hebrew people enslaved there….”Let my People Go”…

Are we standing on the edge of witnessing, once again, the profound power of the people to claim their freedom? Will we see a

February 11, 2011 0 comments

Nature

Sunrise

by Deb Strafuss February 10, 2011

Once more the Sun does Rise

Golden are the Skies

Beauty does Arise

Catches us by Surprise….

Every morning I drive to work…..there is traffic, news, last minute must-dos, a mind full of thoughts, reactions and plans

Fortunately, there is one last curve before the last corner before the parking lot.

Every morning the sun rises over the pond, the trees stand guard over the dawn, and I know that beauty is here, around me everywhere, if I will just look up and bring my mind to gaze, occasionally, at where I am as I go.

February 10, 2011 0 comments

Spiritual

Icy Reflections…

by Deb Strafuss February 7, 2011

Ice-laced, morning chased

frozen thoughts are raised

reaching to the cold gray sky

asking questions – how and why

Frozen – – in a solemn grip

a single snowflake falls

silently we watch and wait

while a stark earth calls

Unable, unwilling, unspoken

to respond

unknowing, uncaring, not there –

we go on…

Never quite, in our sight

clearly seeing what we’ve done;

where we’ve gone…

Some mornings I rise with joys, others with questions and cold. I seem to read the earth message – search for it – as I rise. Fast frozen in this chrysalis of winter – now is the time to let those questions out into the depths of a cold sleeping world, from a frozen heart. Let them go. Breathe them out. Do not worry how they sound or what they mean. They fall upon the snow-topped frozen earth and wait – like us – for spring. Go about your day. Lose yourself in the concretes of must-dos….those questions lie like burning seeds upon the frame of time. Given, they will rebirth, and visit you with surprise, when time responds and we have ears …

February 7, 2011 1 comment

Politics

Egypt

by Deb Strafuss February 3, 2011

Today I am sad.

You notice that the demonstrations in Egypt did not become violent and dangerous until the “pro-Mubarak” supporters appeared….after the people would not leave upon hearing Mubarak’s “concession” not to run for re-election, but also, not to step down right away…. pointing most clearly to the president’s supporters as being paid agitators, which any reasoning individual would surmise after today’s exhibition.

On a viewer ratings scale, a peaceful demonstration gets old pretty fast.

Today, we must have our excitement, our violence. Once again, we have provided, not news, not a real event of honest people and their lives, but entertainment…..

Once again we crave excitement
Something fine and violent to watch
Something raising our adrenals
Like a new intoxication
Leading deep into addiction

We must have our blazing fury
conflict, violence and confusion
Even our heroes are framed
In confrontational effusion

Losing peaceful resolution
Neath the waves of emotional contusion…
Stirred by what makes news today….

February 3, 2011 0 comments

Spiritual

Happy Winter Solstice!

by Deb Strafuss December 23, 2010

In the dark I rise

and close my eyes

winter’s painted white

all sins lost within the night

softly falling out of sight…

Time to light the light!

One flickering flame

a wealth of bright to gain

sheds warming glow

to draw me close

against the darkness of the snow

Time to celebrate the nights of life! To welcome the chrysalis of winter, to wonder and hibernate in the soul’s sleep of cold and dark while the spirit’s work of life and creation form in the dark. Let winter into your soul, wander in its inner warmth, the energy of new thoughts, directions, plans and life that will bud and grow within the depth of your being if only you let them grow as you slumber in winter’s keep. Do not fight the darkness, fear it or run from it. Embrace the winters of your soul. They are the fertile ground for growth.

Happy New Year

December 23, 2010 0 comments