Pandora’s Box of Love

Photo by Maria Verkhoturtseva on Pexels.com
Love feels like Pandora's Box of contradicting experiences
Love alights you upon a mountain top of elation
And sequesters you in a dungeon of anxiety
Love can feel like Elysian Fields
And Dante's Inferno
Love can make you feel like an accomplished genius
And the village idiot
Love gives your soul wings
And your body two left feet
Love makes poetry of your dreams
And salad of your words
Love inspires amazing highs
And devastating lows
Love is celebrated when it arrives
And mourned when it departs
Pleasure and pain separated by fate's coin toss
A game of chance we cannot stop playing

-gws

Cartwheels

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com
I want to revisit the joy of cartwheels in summer grass
Serenaded by the wing beats of bees and the chorus of hummingbirds and sparrows
I want to drowse amongst dandelions while playing 
Warshak games with passing clouds in azure skies
I want to hide beneath curtains of willow branches
Making friends of the trees with whispered secrets

I want to run time backward
To when summer days were never ending
And daydreams frolicked in the warmth of long lazy unburdened afternoons
I want to sit suspended in the amber of youthful memory
Its glowing lens casting every scene in warm nostalgic hues
Golden hour light cast upon fading Kodachrome images 
That compose dust mote-filled summer slideshows of my heart

-gws

Portrait Poem

You smile uncomfortably 
Staring into the lens of the camera 
Your shoulders pulled high
All of your self consciousness visible in your eyes 
You don’t know what to do with your hands 
You do not know how to drop your walls on request 

I wish you could see yourself through my eyes 
The photographer’s eyes
Eyes that see the sparks that spill off of you 
Every time you laugh 
The natural glow on your cheeks 
The beauty of the asymmetrical smile
Caused by the single dimple 
That only appears when your face
Is animated by genuine joy
The unguardedness of your body language 
When you are feeling safe and comfortable 
Hands animating your stories with 
Increasing enthusiasm as you speak

I want the viewer to see the three dimensions of you
Hidden within your two dimensional portrait 
I want the viewer to want to know you
Drawn in by all the small clues of you
Leading viewers toward the vastness of you
I want the viewer to discover your dimple
Question what crinkles the corners of your eyes
Be captivated by the joy radiating from your natural smile 

If I have done my job well 
Your photo will feel familiar to a stranger 
You will appear as approachable as any friend 
If I have done my job well
I will have created a likeness of you
That asks you to befriend and love yourself 
As much as those of us who know you love you
If I have done my job well
You will have premised me to alchemize
A tiny fraction of your soul
So all who come to know you through your image
Will wonder what magic they missed in the opportunity to know

-gws

On Becky’s Retirement

Photo by Lara Jameson on Pexels.com
Your hearty chuckle we will miss
Your quirk and humor too
A life of leisure and of bliss
Is soon awaiting you

No more price checks for you to chase
Nor contracts or email replies
It's time to fill up that empty suitcase
And share your cheerful goodbyes

May retirement be all you hope
And these halls but just a memory
We just ask that you not gloat
As you enjoy your unfettered reverie

-gws

Ode to the Couple on the Corner Compulsively Compelled by Their Compact Computers

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
The digital divide is a divisive devil
Erecting electronic edifices
Severing sacred spaces
Intended for intimate inhabitation
Subjugating and suffocating
Candid considerate connections
Exsanguinating emotional efforts
Ridiculously replacing rapport
With mindless meaningless memes and
Endless eager empty emojis
Segregated strangers staring submissively
Into inexorable insipidness instead of
Havens of humble human hearts

-gws

I Loved Myself Plenty

I loved myself plenty
I spent so much energy on him
there was none left for me
But the echos of my knowing
The spark that was always the heart of who I am
Could not be extinguished 
No matter how hard he tried
And he raged against
My defiance to submission and subjugation
And when I could endure no more
I was done
I breathed my flame back to life
And I am once again its keeper
Ensuring it is fed and protected in any storm
I will not be dimmed or diminished again

Friendship Garden

I am lucky to have cultivated a lush garden of beautiful, meaningful friendships throughout my life.  I am luckier, still, to be planted in the deep soil of my friends’ gardens where they shower me in love, and light, and their amazing company.  To exist in a well tended garden cultivates a gratitude so profound it can only erupt from me in joyful colors painted with hugs, laughter, and happy tears like sacred rain upon parched earth.

- gws